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MASTERS IN HISTORY. 



MASTERS IN HISTORY. 

GIBBON p 1^ 

GROTE A ^-^ 

MACAULAY 

MOTLEY. 



BY THE 

REV. PETER ANTON, 

DYSART. 



"Biography is by nature the most universally profitable, universally pleasant, of 
all things, especially Biography of distinguished individuals." — Carlyle. 




EDINBURGH: 
MACNIVEN & WALLACE, PRINCES STREET. 

1880. 



3^ 



^ 
O 






PREFACE. 



Neither this book nor the series of which it forms a part 
pretends to any higher claim than to be a concise 
epitome of the Hves which it recounts, designed for those 
whom youth, business, disincUnation, or lack of oppor- 
tunity prevents perusing long biographies, but who 
nevertheless desire, as shortly as may be, to know what 
those great men were, what they did, and how they did 
it. The design being purely personal, criticism is intro- 
duced only to give a more complete presentation of the 
subjects and the lessons they teach, and to illustrate, 
embellish, or vary the narrative. We are sanguine that 
such an effort will be found to be of use by those among 
whom it is believed to be most desiderated — from 
schoolboys who have little more than read their first 
novel to business-men whose exacting occupations leave 
scanty leisure for the pursuit of knowledge. 



CONTENTS. 



PAGE 
EDWARD GIBBON, ...... i 

GEORGE GROTE, ...... 6l 

T. B. MACAULAY, . . . . . .121 



JOHN MOTLEY, 



195 



EDWARD GIBBON, 



Of Michael Angelo it has been said, in the realm of art, 
stat mag?ii nonwiis umbra. No higher tribute than this 
could possibly be paid to human attainment in any 
department of intellectual life. The claim made by the 
admirers of the painter and sculptor is the very greatest, 
but nevertheless it is one which in the sphere of modern 
historical literature could also be made for Edward 
Gibbon. Indeed, not reckoning some of the great 
historical masters of antiquity — leaving specially out of 
account Tacitus and Herodotus, — there are no names in 
his own special department his does not fairly throw into 
shade. In speaking of the ancient historians, we cannot 
forget they worked under conditions essentially their own, 
and it is only with those of his own time and writers 
similarly situated to the events they seek to record, and 
the records of these events, a man like Gibbon can with 
due fairness be brought into comparison. To contrast, 
however, the work of Gibbon with the work of his Scottish 
contemporaries, Robertson and Hume, or with the work 
of those who since his time have made for themselves 
great names as historical writers, however interesting or 
profitable it might be, consists not with our present 
purpose. The aim of these sketches is not to enter into 
any special discourse either critical, political, or philo- 
sophical, regarding the history, but to pass in brief and 
rapid review the life of the historian, with the influences 
<^> A 



2 Masters in History. 

that moulded, the sorrows that chastened, the activities 
that filled, and the aspirations that quickened it. As 
with every artist and his work, so with the historian and 
his : you cannot fully comprehend the two apart because 
each interprets the other ; and so the key to the inner 
meaning of any great history— the tone that pervades it, 
the undercurrent that runs through it, the bias that turns 
it— is to be found for the most part buried in the life of 
the historian. 

It is possibly not unworthy of remark that whilst the 
capitals of England and Scodand have ever been the 
centres of the intellectual activity of the two countries, 
the points to which their intellectual forces have gravitated 
and the rallying places of their respective men of genius 
and culture, London and Edinburgh, are not distinguished 
above many humbler towns in both countries as having 
been the birthplaces of their greatest men. If the former 
can boast she was the mother of Dryden and Milton, still 
the provinces can speak of Shakspeare in the drama. 
Fielding in romance, Johnson in polite letters, and 
Wordsworth in poetry. Again, if the Modern Athens is 
proud of Scott, still Ayrshire has Robert Burns, Dumfries- 
shire Thomas Carlyle, and Paisley Christopher North. 

It would have been something if London could have 
marked as her own the author of "The Decline and Fall." 
It was not, however, in that city but near it, at Putney, on 
the 8th May 1737, that Edward Gibbon was born. Of a 
family of seven he was the eldest, but his one sister and 
five brothers survived not the period of their infancy. 
From the time of his birth the life of Edward also was 
regarded as precarious, and the child was of so sickly a 
constitution that the minds of his parents were not seldom 
filled with the very gravest fears. 

The historian plumed himself on his ancestry, and 



Edward Gibbon. 3 

delighted to trace back his pedigree to the times of the 
Edwards. What truth there is in his claims we cannot 
tell, but considering the importance which the researches 
of Bastian and others have given to such investigations, 
he would be a bold man indeed who, in these days, would 
venture to assume the spirit of the Old Gardener and 
" smile at the claims of long descent." On the whole, on 
the ground of ancestry Gibbon had not much room to 
boast himself; but still his grandfather was a man of more 
than ordinary talents and common force of character. 
Although when the South Sea Bubble burst, his fortunes 
were scattered to the winds — the fortunes he had hardly 
gathered by his business tact and care ; still he did not 
mope and repine, and eventually die of starvation and a 
broken heart in a poor-house : he turned a stern face to 
the black outlook, and when he died he was wealthier 
than ever. He attained in his lifetime to some eminence, 
for he was a commissioner of customs, and strange to say 
must have discussed the state of the taxes with Mat Prior, 
who was one of his colleagues in office. All things con- 
sidered it may be quite true what Bolingbroke said, " No 
man knew better than Mr Edward Gibbon the commerce 
and finances of England." The son of this gentleman 
and the father of the historian was a man of a different 
stamp altogether. Although he had the best education 
the times could bestow, the experiences of continental 
travel, and a seat in the House of Commons, still he was 
a weak, vacillating, impulsive man, but withal it is to be 
remembered to his credit he had a gentle disposition and 
a kind and loving heart, and these things more than all 
intellectual acuteness are deserving of the higher com- 
mendation. One already named said truthfully, "The 
heart's aye the part aye that makes us right or wrong," 
and it is gratifying to think if the life of the elder Gibbon 



4 Masters in History, 

were measured by this standard alone there would not 
be found much occasion for fault-finding. 

To little purpose as it was, the parent was anxious the 
son should run the race his father ran. All attempts, 
however, to give the young Edward a systematic educa- 
tion were completely frustrated by the miserable state of 
his bodily health. Those years that should have been 
filled with the exuberance and frolic of school life had in 
them too much of pain, languor, and sickness to be 
recollected with pleasure. They brought no fresh re- 
miniscences to the mind of the great historian when he 
sat down to write his autobiography : if they had done so, 
one may easily conjecture how delicately and with what 
ease and grace the pen that could trace with such graphic 
power the progress and achievements of the Roman 
legion would have stooped to recount the incidents of a 
snowball fight at Westminster School or a football match 
in its playground. The remark that Wellington made 
about the making of the warriors of England as he looked 
on the Eton boys at their sports he might also have made 
about her senators. The friends of Gibbon confessed 
themselves astonished and taken aback that during the 
years he sat in the House he never ventured to open his 
lips ; but when we look on the pale, delicate boy thus 
early turning away from the rude noise and wrangle of 
his companions, we must cease to wonder at the conduct 
of the grown man. 

Two years spent at a school in Westminster was the 
only approach Edward Gibbon ever had to any kind of 
systematic education during his earlier years, and when 
the bent of the boy's mind is considered, the nature of 
the teaching of the time, and the insufferable cruelty he 
would have been compelled to endure from his stronger 
companions, there is, on this score, very little cause for 



Edward Gibbo7i. 5 

lamentation indeed. In the academies of the time party 
spirit and flogging had full play. Edward was buffeted 
and reviled because his father was a Tory. It was a,t the" 
expense of both tears and blood he purchased his know- 
ledge of the Latin syntax. 

There can be little doubt if Gibbon had remained 
much longer at school, and under continued subjection 
to this petty tyranny both without and within the walls, 
all love of letters in him would have been finally quenched. 
Considering then, what he had to do in the world, and 
the untiring zeal required for the work, possibly the best 
thing that could have happened him was the complete 
breakdown of his health, which at this time took place. 
An occult nervous affection utterly prostrated him, and, 
" contracting his legs, produced, without any visible 
symptom, the most excruciating pain." During the pro- 
gress of this illness he was watched over night and day 
by his aunt, Catherine Porten, with a care more than 
maternal. The disinterested and tender affection then 
shewn him he never forgot, and when long years after- 
wards he came to detail the circumstances which called 
forth such loving efforts, the great historian had to con- 
fess when he wrote the letters of Catherine Porten's 
name, " he felt a tear of gratitude trickling down his 
cheek." 

Possessed of an inquisitive mind and a keen thirst for 
knowledge, there was very little fear, although removed 
from school. Gibbon would grow up either ignorant or un- 
scholarly. Left to the bent of his own mind, and to follow 
the leading of his own inclination, the future historian of 
the " Decline and Fall " laid up a greater store of know- 
ledge against the coming time than he ever would have 
done under the strictest master. Before he had reached 
his sixteenth year his reading had become both extensive 



6 Masters in History. 

and cultured. Every book in English on Arabia, Persia, 
Tartary, and Turkey, this weak, lame lad had already at 
his fingers' ends. As he read, his historical instincts 
developed themselves, and the old masters in history — 
Herodotus, Xenophon, Tacitus, and Procopius — he tells , 
us, at this period of his life, were by him " greedily de- 
voured." Lives of illustrious individuals, too, and grave 
historical events, usually studied only by men after their 
powers are matured, had already for the boy a peculiar 
fascination and a living interest. Mahomet and the 
successors of Constantine had even thus early, to his 
mind, ceased to be but indistinct figures moving on the 
dark background of the past. These then were the seeds 
of learning cast into this young intellect, that were to 
spring up, and bear their hundredfold after many days. 

After Gibbon's fourteenth year, and particularly on to 
the end of his sixteenth, a wonderful change passed over 
his whole constitution. Before this time there was 
apparently before the boy only a brief life of lameness 
and disease. Now, however, an unexpected tide of 
health poured rapidly in on him. His nervous affections 
ceased, and his lameness disappeared — improvements at 
which his father was in ecstasies ; but he took the very 
worst of all means to testify to his delight : he hurried 
him off to Oxford, and entered him as a gentleman 
commoner at Magdalen College. This was in the April 
of 1752, and before Edward had completed his fifteenth 
year. 

Not often does Oxford find such a freshman as it 
found in this Putney convalescent. He was possessed 
of a "^stock of erudition which might have puzzled a 
doctor, and a degree of ignorance of which a school boy 
might have been ashamed." Such was the quantity of 
his scholarship, and such the nature of his ignorance, he 



Edward Gibbon. 7 

tells us, when he found the sacred precincts of Magdalen; 
and — all honour to the good old times, and all praise to 
the English Universities of that time, their learned tutors 
and their grave professors — such also was the quantity of 
the scholarship, and such also the degree of ignorance of 
Edward Gibbon when he left these precincts for ever ! 
He wrote afterwards — " To the University of Oxford I 
acknowledge no obligation, and she will as readily re- 
nounce me for a son, as I am willing to disclaim her for 
a mother. I spent fourteen months at Magdalen College; 
they proved the most idle and unprofitable of my whole 
life. The reader will pronounce between the school and 
the scholar." 

And there is no considerate reader will give his verdict 
wholly in favour of either the one party or the other. 
The sight is too common, even at the present day, of 
young men coming out from our universities little better 
than they went in, for us to be caught by Gibbon's plead- 
ing, and throw the whole blame of his idleness and folly 
at college, on the back of his university. It is true there 
was little interest in scholarship, and no discipline, but it 
just says the less for Gibbon that he showed no power to 
rise superior to the temptations about him, and gave way 
to a culpable idleness. On these fourteen months he 
ever professed to look back with the utmost regret ; but 
after all things are taken into consideration, and all allow- 
ances made, this regret seems to have been wholly out of 
proportion to the extent of his dissipations. His life was 
anything but gross, it was simply free and easy, and very 
much suited to the nature of a young person who felt for 
the first time in his life the glee and spirit which are but 
the legitimate offspring of a sound constitution. Possibly 
these boyish freaks of his short university life, and the 
truant excursions he took to Bath, Buckingham, and 



8 Masters in History. 

London, brought him more than he ever knew. When 
men have come to love only their work and their books, 
their morning constitutionals, and their regular and solid 
dinners, they are hardly capable of looking with an im- 
partial eye on the exploits of their early days, when yet 
their blood was warm, and not "a muscle had stopped in 
its playing." 

With all his idleness, so far as college work was con- 
cerned, it is not to be supposed that the mind of the 
student was, therefore, wholly inactive. So far from that, 
it had returned with increased zeal to an old and favourite 
subject of thought. There was inbred in him a taste for 
theological discussion, and whilst at Oxford, Gibbon gave 
it the fullest indulgence. He read Middleton's " Free 
Enquiry into the Miraculous Powers which are supposed 
to have subsisted in the Christian Church ;" Bossuet on 
"The Exposition of Catholic Doctrine" and "The History 
of the Protestant Variations." These and other works 
made their impression, and, as usual in such cases, a 
catholic preceptor appeared in one of his companions to 
fan the rising flame, and direct and stimulate the growing 
impulse. We have here to note surely one of the strangest 
episodes that ever occurred in the history of a mind 
so young. From first to last, religion with Gibbon was 
never a matter of the heart, it never was anything else 
than an intellectual appeal — a thing of syllogisms, to be 
overthrown or established by an application of correct 
logical principles, — or a matter of fact to be attested and 
certified by documentary evidence of sufficient authority. 
To him, at no time, was Christianity a principle entering 
into life to subdue, mould, and chasten it ; an impulse in 
human existence flowing from the agency of an active 
spirit. If any man ever had Christianity in his head but 
wanted it in his heart, it was Gibbon. So peculiarly con- 



Edward Gibbon. g 

stituted, there is little wonder that, so soon as the mind 
of Gibbon was set Romewards, it advanced with vast 
rapidity. Gauging afterwards the powers that swayed 
him at this crisis, he says — " I was unable to resist the 
weight of historical evidence that, within the same period 
(the first four centuries of Christianity), most of the lead- 
ing doctrines of Popery were already introduced in theory 
and practice. Nor was my conclusion absurd, that 
miracles are the test of truth, and that the Church must 
be orthodox and pure which was so often approved by 
the visible interposition of the Deity. The marvellous 
tales which are boldly attested by the Basils and Chry- 
sostoms, the Austins and Jeromes, compelled me to em- 
brace the superior merits of celibacy, the institution of 
the monastic life, the use of the sign of the cross, of holy 
oil, and even of images ; the invocation of saints, the 
worship of relics, the rudiments of purgatory in prayers 
for the dead, and the tremendous mystery of the sacrifice 
of the body and the blood of Christ, which insensibly 
swelled into the prodigy of transubstantiation." The 
phase of life Gibbon was now passing through seemed, in 
after years, incredible to him ; the fact was he grew to 
be ashamed of these early beliefs, feeling that, by having 
momentarily succumbed to them, he had degraded his 
intellect. But, apart from all after opinion, the fact 
remains — " He read, he applauded, he believed, and 
he fell" 

After Gibbon's conversion to Romanism, or rather after 
he had grasped it as a historical and intellectual system, 
he immediately took steps to have himself enrolled as a 
member of the religious community to whose principles 
he had become attached. Youth is always impulsive 
and impetuous, and more particularly so when it con- 
ceives itself to be following the dictates of conscience. 



lo Masters in History. 

" A momentary glow of enthusiasm had raised him 
above all temporal considerations," and with all the 
pomp, dignity, and self-satisfaction of a martyr, he 
penned a letter annomicing his conversion to his father, 
while at the same time he sought the feet of one Baker, 
a Jesuit, and chaplain of the Sardinian Ambassador, and 
there " solemnly, though privately, abjured the errors of 
heresy." The date of the meeting with the priest was 
the 8th of June 1753, and Gibbon was at that time just 
one month over fifteen years of age. In after years 
Gibbon seems to have regarded his conversion with very 
varied feelings. At times he would lead us to suppose 
he was proud of his honest and straightforward course 
of conduct ; at other times, again, he seems to look back 
on his conversion with regret. In one place he writes, 
— " For my own part, I am proud of an honest sacrifice 
of interest to conscience. I can never blush, if my 
tender mind was entangled in the sophistry that seduced 
the acute and manly understandings of Chillingworth 
and Bayle, who afterwards emerged from their supersti- 
tion." In another place and in another tone he says, 
— " To my present feelings it seems incredible that I 
should ever believe that I believed in transubstantiation." 
And once again, in sad commiseration of the fact that 
he had never received any religious teaching before par- 
taking of episcopal ordinances, — " Without a single lec- 
ture, either public or private, either Christian or Pro- 
testant, without any academical subscription, without any 
episcopal ordination, I was left by light of my catechism 
to grope my way to the chapel and communion table, 
where I was admitted without question how far or by 
what means I might be qualified to receive the Sacra- 
ment. Such almost incredible neglect was productive of 
the worst mischiefs." 



Edward Gibbon. ii 

What these mischiefs were the historian does not tell 
us, but they are not far to seek. One can readily con- 
ceive, when he wrote these words, he had in his mind's 
eye the form of a certain youth kneeling in humility at 
the feet of a well-remembered Jesuit. All things con- 
sidered, however, it need cause us little astonishment 
upon the whole, that at this time Gibbon made ship- 
wreck of his faith. His mother died when he was ten 
(December 1747), and so, although she had abundant 
opportunity, still she never endeavoured in the smallest 
way to embue the mind of her son with religious prin- 
ciples, or to direct his precocious feelings into worthy 
channels. His father was only zealous about his secular 
education. Being thus left to " grope his way," there 
can be very little cause for wonder that he stumbled in 
the dark, and that the whole history of his religious 
experiences was strangely erratic. 

The elder Gibbon was not without his faults, but he 
was capable on occasion of acting with decision and 
promptitude. After his first burst of passion at his son's 
perversion was over, he resolved immediately to take 
counteractive measures. Before the month in which his 
son had " gone over to Rome" had closed, he had settled 
him in Lausanne, in Switzerland, under the orthodox roof 
and tuition of M. PaviUiard, a Calvinist minister. 

Feeling himself an exile and prisoner, the mind of 
Edward Gibbon at first chafed amid its new surround- 
ings. The gentleman commoner of Magdalen, living in 
an elegant apartment, and with his pockets full of money, 
was an infinitely preferable being to the exiled pervert, 
living in an ill-contrived, ill-furnished, badly-heated 
room in a gloomy back street. But, by-and-by, as he 
began to understand the language of the people, and ap- 
preciate the high character and scholarly attainments of 



12 Masters in History, 

his new teacher, this feehng wore off. Under the in- 
fluence of M. Pavilliard all the powers of Gibbon's 
mind were brought into play, and in the years he passed 
under his roof he reaped rich harvests on many literary 
and classical fields. 

The Calvinist minister was a man of the utmost good 
sense, and he was not long in discovering that in all 
matters of scholarship the pupil was ahead of the mas- 
ter. Thus, once more, as in the days of his illness in 
his father's house, was Gibbon left to indulge his own 
tastes, and seek out for himself his own intellectual 
pastures. His literary mentor saw there could come to 
the young student nothing but gain from being allowed 
to pursue his own course. An enthusiasm for the great 
works in the Latin tongue now took possession of Gib- 
bon's mind, and it was an enthusiasm which burned on 
to the last, and which was only quenched with his life. 
The perusal of the Roman classics was at once his exer- 
cise and reward. At this time Cicero was his favourite, 
and he was ready to subscribe to the observation of Quin- 
tillian, that the student may judge of the progress of his 
scholarly tastes by his appreciation of the works of the 
Roman orator. The contents of the Ciceronian epistles, 
orations, and philosophical treatises were as familiar to 
him as if they had been written in his native tongue. 
We can conceive that the roll of the Ciceronian sentence 
must have had a peculiar attraction for the author of " The 
Decline and Fall," and the very slightest study of the 
style of this great work leaves us no occasion for surprise 
at Gibbon's warm commendation of the Latin writer. 
" I tasted," he says, speaking of the works of Cicero, 
" I tasted the beauties of language, I breathed the spirit 
of freedom, and I imbibed from his precepts and ex- 
amples the public and private interest of a man." After 



Edward Gibbo7i. 13 

making himself familiar with Cicero, Gibbon formed, for 
so young a man, the vast design of reading through the 
whole of the Latin authors. He divided them into four 
divisions : i. Historians ; 2. Poets ; 3. Orators ; and 4. 
Philosophers ; and this great plan, before he left Laus- 
anne, he had very nearly accomplished. 

Carrying on this systematic study of the Roman 
classics, the student did not neglect other languages 
and literatures. M. Pavilliard introduced him to the 
language of Greece, but while he seems to have made 
satisfactory progress in its study, and acquired a know- 
ledge of it much above the modicum usually accounted 
for respectability, with the tongue of the Hellenes he 
never acquired that famiharity he had with the language 
of Cicero. His mother tongue was at this time likely to 
be left wholly in the background. The language not 
only of Pavilliard, but of Lausanne and neighbourhood, 
was French, and Gibbon soon acquired in it such a 
facility that it became to him, after a very short resi- 
dence, not merely the language of his speech and writ- 
ing, but also of his thought. 

Important as was the education which he received from 
M. Pavilliard, and much as it profited him in after life, 
still it was not to be educated that his father had sent 
him to Lausanne. The first duty of the master in this 
instance was not the education but the conversion of the 
pupil. Brought into contact with such a mind as Pavil- 
liard's, the effect on Gibbon might have been calculated 
from the beginning. Never forgetting his first duty by 
his pupil, trained in all the arts of ecclesiastical polemics, 
ever calm and self-controlled, in his argument ever lum- 
inous and logical, he was a man peculiarly adapted to 
root out from a mind like Gibbon's the weeds of Ro- 
manism. Any open attack on the part of the master 



14 Masters in History. 

would have been repelled by the pupil ; any hasty 
words would have been indignantly thrown back ; any 
imperfect arguments were sure to be detected ; but in 
none of these things did Pavilliard fail. He used the 
utmost discrimination. Casting in here a little and there 
a Httle of the leaven of Protestantism ; by-and-by the 
whole was leaven, and in a difficult and delicate task, the 
Calvinist won a perfect triumph. " The various articles 
of the Romish creed disappeared like a dream" from the 
mind of Gibbon, and on the Christmas-day of 1754 he 
partook of the sacrament in the Protestant Church of 
Lausanne. 

This time it was to Mrs Porten and not to his father 
he gave the first intelligence of the change that 
had taken place in his religious opinions. " Dear 
madam, I have at length good news to tell you. I am 
now good Protestant, and am extremely glad of it. I 
have in all my letters taken notice of the different move- 
ments of my mind, entirely CathoHc when I came to 
Lausanne, wavering long between the two systems, and 
at last fixed for the Protestant — when that conflict was 
over, I had still another difficulty — brought up with all 
the ideas of the Church of England, I could scarce 
resolve to communion with Presbyterians, as all the 
people of this country are. I at last got over it, for 
considering that whatever difference there may be between 
these churches and ours, in the government and dis- 
cipline, they still regard us as brethren and profess the 
same faith as us — determined then in this design, I 
declared it to the ministers of the town, assembled at 
Mr Pavilliard's, who having examined me, approved of 
it, and permitted me to receive the communion with 
them, which I did Christmas day from the hands of Mr 
Pavilliard, who appeared extremely glad of it. I am so 



Edward Gibbon. 15 

extremely myself— and do assure you, feel a joy extremely 
pure, and the more so, as I know it to be not only 
innocent but laudable." 

When we remember that Gibbon was little short of 
five years at Lausanne, and taking into account the fact 
that he was in his sixteenth year when he was sent there 
by his father, it is very readily to be conceived that 
other passions would come to the young man than merely 
a burning love for the Roman classics. The passion 
that reigned in the breast of Laura's lover has been a 
good deal talked about, but possibly not more so than 
the similar affection that disturbed the early dreams of 
the author of the " Decline and Fall." While, however, 
the loves of both men have been much talked about, 
they have been talked about in very different ways. 
While the part acted by the Sonneteer has been almost 
universally praised, the part acted by the historian has 
been almost as universally condemned. A poet wander- 
ing about all his life writing sonnets to a lady to whom 
he never had spoken, and who was the wife of another 
man, is a sight that may readily be clothed with the hues 
of romance. Again, however, the story that tells of a 
young man loving a young lady dearly, and this lady the 
recognised beauty of the place, returning the young man's 
sentiments although sought after by others, and which 
goes on to shew that the young man was obliged to draw 
back by reason of certain mercenary objections of his 
father, it must be confessed, has a very plain, worldly 
flavour about it. 

With a fine taste. Gibbon said, that "he hesitated 
from the apprehension of ridicule when he approached 
the delicate subject of his early love," but all the same 
he gives us a very full and particular account of its 
beginning, progress, and end. The Pavilliards were by 



1 6. Masters in History. 

no means rich, but still on account of their position and 
respectability they were cordially welcomed in the best 
society of Lausanne. Through them Gibbon was intro- 
duced into all the best families of the town and was 
heartily received by all. On no account could his recep- 
tion have been owing to his personal appearance. In after 
years he grew ponderous and corpulent, but at this time 
we have Lord Sheffield's word for it, "he had a thin 
little figure with a large head." He was trained in the 
polite exercises of dancing and fencing, and though not 
lacking a fitting deportment, yet wanting both presence 
and physique, left to himself he would have had difficulty 
in gaining that place in even Lausanne circles, which by 
his master's influence he secured at once. It was by 
M. Pavilliard's introductions he met Mademoiselle Susan 
Curchod. This lady was the daughter of the Calvinist 
minister of Crossier, lying in the mountains that separate 
the Pays de Vaud from the county of Burgundy. She 
was born in the year 1740, and from her earliest years, 
her father had devoted himself with the utmost pains to 
her education. She was gifted with a fine intelligence, 
and she soon excelled in every kind of learning. But it 
was not with her as with Madame De Stael ; to mental 
accomplishments of the highest kind were united personal 
attractions the most pleasing. When she appeared at 
Lausanne, she immediately became the talk of the town, 
and whether she went out to play or reception, she was 
equally surrounded with a crowd of admirers. Gibbon 
heard the reports and his curiosity was excited. He 
saw and loved. What followed has been told over and 
over again, but it can never be told by any other writrer 
so warmly, so truthfully, yet so gracefully, as it has been 
by the historian himself. " I found her learned without 
pedantry, lively in conversation, pure in sentiment, and 



Edward Gibbon. 17 

elegant in manners; and the first sudden emotion was 
fortified by the habits and knowledge of a more familiar 
acquaintance. She permitted me to make two or three 
visits to her father's house. I passed some days there in 
the mountains of Burgundy, and her parents honourably 
encouraged the connection. In a calm retirement the 
gay vanity of youth no longer fluttered in her bosom ; 
she listened to the voice of truth and passion, and I 
might presume to hope that I made some impression on 
a virtuous heart. At Grassy and X-ausanne I indulged 
my dream of felicity; but on my return to England, I 
soon discovered that my father would not hear of this 
strange alliance, and that, without his consent, I was 
destitute and helpless. After a painful struggle I yielded 
to my fate ; I sighed as a lover, I obeyed as a son ; my 
wound was insensibly healed by time, absence and the 
habits of a new life. My cure was accelerated by a 
faithful report of the tranquillity and cheerfulness of the 
lady herself, and my love subsided into friendship and 
esteem. The minister of Grassy soon afterwards died ; 
his stipend died with him ; his daughter retired to 
Geneva, where by teaching young ladies, she earned a 
hard subsistence for herself and her mother ; but in her 
lowest distress she maintained a spotless reputation and 
a dignified behaviour. A rich banker of Paris, a citizen 
of Geneva, had the good fortune and good sense to 
discover and possess this inestimable treasure ; and in 
the capital of taste and luxury she resisted the temptations 
of wealth, as she had sustained the hardships of indigence. 
The genius of her husband has exalted him to the most 

conspicuous station in Europe and Mademoiselle 

Curchod is now the wife of M. Necker, the minister, and 
perhaps the legislator of the French monarchy." 

Switzerland and England are far apart, but yet, the 

(a) g 



1 8 Masters in History. 

young gentleman of twenty and the young lady of seven- 
teen that met amongst the mountains of Burgundy, were 
destined to meet again, and on the score of friendship to 
indulge a cordial intimacy. It would no doubt have 
been better for Gibbon had his father allowed him to 
follow his inclinations and marry Mdlle. Curchod, but 
still he would be a bold man, indeed, who would venture 
for a moment to say that he acted a part other than 
honourable. Nobody would hold, of course, for an 
instant, the other extreme position that Gibbon showed 
either heroism or even the highest of spirit in the matter. 
And it was good for him he didn't. His whole behaviour 
was eminently creditable to him, as it was at once sensible 
and dutiful. That his love had never been either warm 
or true is a coarse accusation, against which his after-life 
bears sufficient witness. Although he bowed to the 
dictates of his father, that is not to say the effort was 
made without pain. It is true we cannot estimate 
Gibbon's suffering at very much, from anything on record, 
or anything he himself says, but if we judge it by this, that 
after the failure of his first wishes he never entertained 
again any serious thoughts of forming a matrimonial 
alliance, it could neither have been little nor soon 
forgotten. 

Another intimacy formed at Lausanne, and one that 
was to remain ever unbroken, was that contracted by 
Gibbon for M. Deyverdun. This friendship was formed 
on the basis of mutual esteem and was of the highest 
benefit to both parties. M. Deyverdun was not such a 
deep student as his companion, but still he had a sincere 
love of books and a desire of knowledge for its own sake. 
To Gibbon, who passed a sedentary life, and who cared 
nothing for the robust physical exercises of youth, the 
elegant manners, the refined conversation, and the 



Edward Gibbon, 19 

amiable temperament of M. Deyverdun seem to have 
been peculiarly agreeable and attractive. 

Only one man of note in the world of letters was it 
Gibbon's fortune to meet while in Switzerland. This 
was Voltaire. The years 1 757-1 758 he spent in the 
neighbourhood of Lausanne. His settlement there was 
immediately after he had by his own misconduct for- 
feited the favour of the Prussian Court. Gibbon was as 
eager to make the acquaintance of the philosopher, as he 
had been of the beauty. Not similarly, however, was 
his enthusiasm answered. The Frenchman received the 
English youth in the coldest manner. Voltaire was irrit- 
able beyond measure, and a slight indiscretion on 
Gibbon's part ruffled his temper, and was by no means cal- 
culated to make matters sweeter between them. So soon 
as Voltaire had settled at Lausanne, he found, as another 
felt, that " Lake Leman woo'd him with her crystal face," 
and he wrote an ode in her praise. This effusion the 
Frenchman showed to Gibbon, and allowed him to 
peruse it twice. The memory of the young student was 
retentive. The two readings fixed the poem in Gibbon's 
memory, and a copy of it was soon in circulation amongst 
the people of the town. Voltaire thought he had been 
taken advantage of, and was extremely displeased. This 
indiscretion on Gibbon's part destroyed the possibility of 
all intimacy in the future between him and the irascible 
philosopher. But although it broke, what might have 
come to be in the course of time, a strong bond of 
friendship, it did not shut out Gibbon from the theatre 
which Voltaire had established. On almost every occa- 
sion when a dramatic representation was to be given the 
ardour of the English youth seldom failed to secure a 
ticket, and it was here he had the good fortune with all 
the pomp and declamation of the old stage to see Voltaire 



20 Masters in History. 

appear in his best characters — Lusignan, Alvarez, Be- 
nassar, Eupheraon. 

On the iith of April 1758, Gibbon took leave of 
Lausanne ; and though it had been to him a place of 
exile, still not without regret did he bid it farewell. He 
had gone to it a Catholic, he now left it a Protestant. 
The years he had spent with the Pavilliards had been 
filled with laborious studies, and, through the energy of 
his teacher, certain tendencies acquired at Oxford, of 
gaming for high stakes at cards and using the pleasures 
of the table too freely, had been, if not extirpated, at 
least kept in check. It is not too much to say, in those 
five years Gibbon spent at Lausanne, he went through a 
course of study much more valuable than he could have 
received at any of the English colleges of the time, and 
being under such a master as M. Pavilliard, he was 
exempt from those temptations, flowing from youthful 
companionship, he was naturally ill-fitted to withstand. 
During his stay his reading had been exact, methodical, 
and extensive. In the following remarks from the pre- 
face to a series of memoranda commenced two years 
after this date, we trace the wise and discriminating rules 
that had guided his studies : — 

" ' Reading is to the mind,' said the Duke of Vivonne 
to Louis XIV., 'what your partridges are to my chops.' 
It is, in fact, the nourishment of the mind ; for by read- 
ing we know our Creator, His works, ourselves chiefly, 
and our fellow-creatures. But this nourishment is easily 
converted into poison. Dalmasius had read as much as 
Grotius, perhaps more ; but their different modes of 
reading made the one an enlightened philosopher, and 
the other, to speak plainly, a pedant, pufled up with 
useless erudition. 

" Let us read with method, and propose to ourselves 



Edward Gibbon. 21 

an end to which all our studies may point. Through 
the neglect of this rule gross ignorance often disgraces 
great readers ; who, by skipping hastily and irregularly 
from one subject to another, render themselves incapable 
of combining their ideas. So many detached parcels 
of knowledge cannot form a whole. This inconstancy 
weakens the energy of the mind, creates in it a dislike to 
application, and even robs it of the advantages of 
natural good sense. 

" Yet let us avoid the contrary extreme, and respect 
method, without rendering ourselves its slaves. While 
we propose an end in our reading, let not this end be too 
remote ; and when once we have attained it, let our 
attention be directed to a different subject. Inconstancy 
weakens the understanding a long and exclusive appli- 
cation to a single object hardens and contracts it. Our 
ideas no longer change easily into a different channel, 
and the course of reading to which we have too long 
accustomed ourselves is the only one we can pursue with 
pleasure. 

"We ought, besides, to be careful not to make the 
order of our thoughts subservient to that of our subjects ; 
this would be to sacrifice the principal to the accessory. 
This use of our reading is to aid us in thinking. The 
perusal of a particular work gives birth, perhaps, to ideas 
unconnected with the subject of which it treats. I wish 
to pursue these ideas \ they withdraw me from my pro- 
posed plan of reading, and throw me into a new track, 
and from thence, perhaps, into a second and third. At 
length I begin to perceive whither my researches tend. 
Their result, perhaps, may be profitable ; it is worth 
while to try j whereas had I followed the high road, I 
should not have been able, at the end of my long 
journey, to retrace the progress of my thoughts. This 



2 2 Masters in History. 

plan of reading is not applicable to our early studies, 
since the severest method is scarcely sufficient to make 
us conceive objects altogether new. Neither can it be 
adopted by those who read in order to write, and who 
ought to dwell on their subject till they have sounded its 
depths. These reflections, however, I do not absolutely 
warrant. On the supposition that they are just, they 
may be so, perhaps for myself only. The constitution of 
minds differs like that of bodies ; the same regimen will 
not suit all. Each individual ought to study his own. 

" To read with attention, exactly to define the expres- 
sions of our author, never to admit a conclusion without 
comprehending its reason, often to pause, reflect, and 
interrogate ourselves, these are so many advices which it 
is easy to give, but difficult to follow. The same may 
be said of that almost evangelical maxim of forgetting 
friends, country, religion, of giving merit its due praise, 
and embracing truth wherever it is to be found. 

'' But what ought we to read ? Each individual must 
answer this question for himself, agreeably to the object 
of his studies. The only general precept that I would 
venture to give is that of Pliny, ' to read much rather 
than many things ; ' to make a careful selection of the 
best works, and to render them famiHar to us by atten- 
tive and repeated perusals." 

When Gibbon found himself again on EngHsh soil, his 
heart was troubled with various anxieties, but as formerly 
he repaired to his aunt Porten, the guardian of his 
tender years, and found her nature as warm, and her 
counsels as wise as they had ever been. Not so hastily 
did he seek the face of his father. The last time he had 
seen that countenance it had been clouded with anger, 
and besides, the elder Gibbon had now married a second 
time, and the son of the first wife was not predisposed 



Edward Gibbon. 23 

to regard the second with favour. It is true we find in 
one of Gibbon's letters from Lausanne to Mrs Porten 
these two sentences — " I forgot to ask you whether, in 
case my father writes to tell me of his marriage, woitld 
yott advise me to compliment my mother-in-law. 1 think 
so.^' But still he regarded his father's marriage as an act 
of displeasure to his son, and on that ground he had got 
to entertain anything but a pleasurable idea of the nature 
of his future intercourse with her. All anxieties were 
dissipated in the very first meeting. In the presence of 
his father and mother-in-law all his vain imaginations 
were dissipated. His father received him as a man and 
a friend, and applauded his education. " Every word 
and action was expressive of the most cordial affection ; 
and our fives would have passed without a cloud if his 
economy had been equal to his fortune, or if his fortune 
had been equal to his desires." Mrs Gibbon he dis- 
covered to be a most amiable and deserving woman, of 
warm and exquisite sensibility. They found so much 
pleasure in each other's society that they soon " adopted 
the tender names and genuine characters of mother and 
son." 

In the year 1761 Gibbon gave to the world his first 
literary work. It had been commenced two years before 
he left Lausanne, and it bore the title of " An Essay on 
the Study of Literature." It was written in French to 
flatter the vanity of the author. Gibbon at this time 
was carried away by the juvenile ambition that it would 
be a fine thing for an Englishman to claim a place 
amongst the writers of France. If the style of the essay 
was in no way remarkable, still the object it had in view 
was worthy of all praise. Its aim was to establish the 
works of the classical masters in the popular mind, by 
emancipating it from the prejudice that then prevailed 



24 Masters in History, 

against them. It brought nothing to the writer, and the 
English translation of the work, small though it was, met 
with a slow sale. It was not till the publication of ''The 
Decline and Fall," that it came to be eagerly sought 
after. 

Meanwhile, in view of impending danger to the 
country, the militia had been called out, and Gibbon 
appointed captain in the Hampshire regiment, of which 
his father was major. The life of an officer of militia 
was as uncongenial to the natural tastes of the historian 
as could well be conceived. He was torn away from his 
books and his studies to spend two years and a half (May 
lo, 1760, to December 23, 1762) of military servitude. But 
little as he took at first to the profession of arms, by and 
by it grew upon him, and he began to entertain serious 
thoughts of embracing it for life. The literary instincts 
of the scholar, however, triumphed over a momentary 
enthusiasm, and he soon began to see that the militia 
was unfit for and unworthy of him. With continual 
marching, camping and parade, he could find almost no 
time for study, and if occasionally he did find a little 
leisure, the surroundings of mifitary tent, guardroom or 
country inn, were not conducive to intellectual applica- 
tion. For eight months he was not able to open a book, 
and the loss of the valuable hours was never compensated 
by a single elevating pleasure. Deep drinking and the 
broad jest of the barrack were his only reliefs from the 
mechanical round of duty. They were questionable 
enjoyments, but they did not undermine the solid founda- 
tions of character that had been laid by the austere 
Pavilliard. He enjoyed them for a time, but by and 
by his better tendencies had sway, and he soured 
at the coarse indulgencies of his boon companions, and 
the rough sports of the rustic officers. Of his doings in 



Edward Gibbon. 25 

the militia he kept a regular journal, and too often do we 
find in it such entries as these. "September 23d. — This 
proved a very debauched day : we drank a good deal 
both after dinner and supper ; and when at last Wilkes 
had retired, Sir Thomas and some others (of whom I was 
one) broke into his room, and made him drink a bottle 
of claret in bed." 

Still, with all its drawbacks, the time spent in the 
militia was not wholly lost. Indeed, though torn from 
his book, he got a very valuable education of another 
kind. He obtained an inside view of our civil and mili- 
tary system ; he saw how armies were fed, commanded 
and handled in the field ; he learned the science of 
tactics, and had abundant opportunities of marking the 
effects of discipline and drill. And not only so, but con- 
trary to his own inclinations, he was brought into contact 
with all kinds of men, so that the reserve of the scholar 
got shaken out of him, and the cosmopolitan ideas he 
had cherished in his study vanished before the growth of 
a manly patriotism. Nor was it a small matter that his 
captaincy brought him from the musty atmosphere of his 
library to the country and the open air. Being com- 
pelled to spend much of his time out of doors, his 
health was recruited, and his constitution substantially 
fortified. All things considered, the time spent by 
Gibbon in the Hampshire militia, although it might have 
been turned to better, was by no means turned to bad 
account. A historian without a practical knowledge of 
military affairs is often placed at a great disadvantage, 
and the insight Gibbon got into such matters came after- 
wards to be of the utmost service. The historian spoke 
from personal experience and truly when he said: — "The 
discipline and evolution of a modern battalion gave me 
a clearer notion of the phalanx and the legion, and the 



26 Masters in History. 

captain of the Hampshire Grenadiers (!) has not been 
useless to the historian of the Roman Empire." 

If such passages as the following show the hand of the 
indefatigable scholar, they also betray the knowledge of 
the militia captain! — "Jerusalem has derived some 
reputation from the number and importance of her 
memorable sieges. It was not till after a long and 
obstinate contest that Babylon and Rome could prevail 
against the obstinacy of the people, the craggy ground 
that might supersede the necessity of fortifications, and 
the walls and towers that would have fortified the most 
accessible plain. These obstacles were diminished in 
the age of the crusades. The bulwarks had been com- 
pletely destroyed and imperfectly restored \ the Jews, their 
nation and worship, were for ever banished ; but nature 
is less changeable than man, and the site of Jerusalem, 
though somewhat softened and somewhat removed, was 
still strong against the assaults of the enemy. By the 
experience of a recent siege and a three years' possession, 
the Saracens of Egypt had been taught to discern, and in 
some degree to remedy, the defects of a place which 
religion as well as honour forbade them to resign. 
Aladan of Iftikhar, the caliph's lieutenant, was entrusted 
with the defence ; his policy strove to restrain the native 
Christians by the dread of their own ruin and that of the 
holy sepulchre j to animate the Moslems by the assurance 
of temporal and eternal rewards. His garrison is said to 
have consisted of forty thousand Turks and Arabians ; 
and if he could muster twenty thousand of the inhabi- 
tants, it must be confessed that the besieged were more 
numerous than the besieging army. Had the diminished 
strength and number of the Latins allowed them to grasp 
the whole circumference of four thousand yards — about 
two English miles and a half — to what useful purpose 



Edward Gibbon. 27 

should they have descended into the valley of Ben 
Himmon and torrent of Cedron, or approached the 
precipices of the south and east, from whence they had 
nothing either to hope or fear ? Their siege was more 
reasonably directed against the northern and western 
sides of the city. Godfrey of Bouillon erected his 
standard on the first swell of Mount Calvary ; and to the 
left, as far as St Stephen's gate, the line of attack was 
continued by Tancred and the two Roberts ; and Count 
Raymond established his quarters from the citadel to 
the foot of Mount Sion, which was no longer included 
within the precincts of the city. On the fifth day the 
crusaders made a general assault, in the fanatic hope of 
battering down the walls without engines, and of scaling 
them without ladders. By the dint of brutal force, they 
burst the first barrier, but they were driven back with 
shame and slaughter to the camp ; the influence of vision 
and prophecy was deadened by the too frequent abuse of 
those pious stratagems, and time and labour were found 
to be the only means of victory. The time of the siege 
was indeed fulfilled in forty days, but they were forty 
days of calamity and anguish. A repetition of the old 
complaint of famine may be imputed in some degree to 
the voracious or disorderly appetite of the Franks, but 
the stony soil of Jerusalem is almost destitute of water \ 
the scanty springs and hasty torrents were dry in the 
summer season, nor was the thirst of the besiegers 
relieved, as in the city, by the artificial supply of cisterns 
and aqueducts. The circumjacent country is equally 
destitute of trees for the uses of shade or building, but 
some large beams were discovered in a cave by the 
crusaders ; a wood near Sichem, the enchanted grove of 
Tasso, was cut down ; the necessary timber was trans- 
ported to the camp by the vigour and dexterity of 



28 Masters in History. 

Tancredj and the engines were framed by those Genoese 
artists who had fortunately landed in the harbour of 
Jaffa. Two movable turrets were constructed at the 
expense and in the stations of the Duke of Lorraine and 
the Count of Toulouse, and rolled forwards with devout 
labour, not to the most accessible, but to the most 
neglected parts of the fortification. Raymond's tower 
was reduced to ashes by the fire of the besieged, but his 
colleague was more vigilant and successful ; the enemies 
were driven by his archers from the rampart ; the draw- 
bridge was let down; and on Friday at three in the 
afternoon, the day and hour of the Passion, Godfrey of 
Bouillon stood victorious on the walls of Jerusalem. His 
example was followed on every side by the emulation of 
valour ; and about four hundred and sixty years after the 
conquest of Omar, the holy city was rescued from the 
Mohammedan yoke. In the pillage of public and 
private wealth, the adventurers had agreed to respect the 
exclusive property of the first occupant ; and the spoils 
of the great mosque — seventy lamps and massy vases of 
gold and silver — rewarded the diligence and displayed 

the generosity of Tancred After seventy thousand 

Moslems had been put to the sword, and the harmless 
Jews had been burnt in their synagogue, they could still 
reserve a multitude of captains whom interest or lassitude 
persuaded them to spare. Of these savage heroes of the 
cross, Tancred alone betrayed some sentiments of com- 
passion ; yet we may praise the more selfish lenity of 
Raymond, who gained a capitulation and safe-conduct to 
the garrison of the citadel. The holy sepulchre was now 
free ; and the bloody visitors prepared to accomplish 
their vow. Bareheaded and barefooted, with contrite 
hearts, and in humble posture, they ascended the hill of 
Calvary amidst the loud anthems of the clergy j kissed 



Edward Gibbon. 29 

the stone which had covered the Saviour of the world, 
and bedewed with tears of joy and penitence the monu- 
ment of their redemption." 

It is not to be thought that Gibbon made no effort to 
loose himself from his militia servitude. On various 
occasions he attempted to resign his commission, but his 
fetters were only rivetted the closer by the solicitude of 
his friends. At length the militia were disembodied, and 
the captain of the Hampshire contingent had his freedom 
once more. His father was anxious he should enter Parha- 
ment, but in a long letter the son showed to the satisfac- 
tion of the parent how much better it would be, and how 
much more to the son's advantage, that the money spent on 
securing his return should be expended in perfecting the 
son's education by foreign travel. The elder Gibbon 
throwing no difficulties in the way of his son carrying out 
his project of making a great continental tour, thirty- 
six days after the disbanding of the miHtia, and on the 
28th January 1763, Edward was in Paris. Although 
travelling by post-chaise was a slow means of locomotion, 
he by no means intended to make up for time lost in 
this way by shortening his stay at the various places he 
intended to visit. The modern tourist is content, for the 
most part, with a casual and hasty survey of the scenery 
of the district through which he passes, and he seeks to 
establish no friendships at all, unless certain of a very fleet- 
ing kind with the various hotel keepers j it was different 
with Gibbon ; he wished not merely to have a knowledge of 
the geography of the countries through which he passed, 
but he was also desirous of knowing their antiquities and 
topography and forming an acquaintance with their great 
living politicians and scientists, but especially with their 
literary men. 

In Paris Gibbon stayed for over three months. He had 



30 Masters in History. 

taken with him recommendatory letters, but his essay 
had been more famous in France than in England, and 
it, joined to the fact that he was an Englishman, pro- 
cured him, more than his written introductions, an easy 
entrance into the best society of the capital. The 
British name at that time being clothed with fresh military 
glory, all classes in Paris were possessed of a severe form 
of Anglo-mania. English opinions, fashions and games 
had become the rage in the salons, and " every English- 
man was supposed to be born a patriot and a philosopher." 
This being the state of things, we do not wonder that the 
doors of certain houses were ever open to the traveller 
four days in the week, and without invitation he could 
dine at the tables of Mesdames Geoffrin and du Bocage, 
of the celebrated Helvetius and of the Baron d'Olbach. 
Amongst men of letters d'Alembert and Diderot were 
the most famous, and Gibbon met both of them. Buffon 
was also in Paris, but him, to his regret, he did not see. 
The time was unfortunate for making the acquaintance 
of men of genius, Voltaire was away at Geneva, Rousseau 
the year before had been driven into exile, and Mon- 
tesquieu and Fontenelle were now no more. The salon 
— meetings of the wealthy, the witty, and the wise, held 
in the drawing-rooms of the great, and presided over by 
the lady of the house — the salon, that unique product of 
the French life of the i8th century, was in its glory, and 
from Gibbon's perfect acquaintance with the language, as 
well as from his natural sympathies, he must have been 
able to enjoy its elegance and refinement, but nowhere, 
strange to say, does he give any indication that he had 
marked the nature of the opinions that were then at these 
gatherings freely ventilated, or ever thought of fore- 
casting the issue of such opinions in the near future. 
The fact was, he was astonished at his reception ; and 



Edward Gibbon. 31 

pleased beyond measure with the continued urbanity of 
the people, he put away for the time being all thought of 
severe studies, and gave himself up to the enjoyment of 
the fascinating society of the French capital. He was so 
enamoured, that if he had been more independent and 
more wealthy, he intended to have taken up house in 
Paris. 

Leaving the salons of Paris behind him, he was again, 
after five years absence, on the shores of the Leman 
Lake, and amongst his old acquaintances at Lausanne, 
His old master met him with embraces and tears, but 
having tasted the luxury of England and Paris he now 
disdained the homely table of Madame Pavilliard, and 
entered himself a pejtsionnaire or boarder at the house of 
M. de Mesery — a house which for the long period of 
twenty years held a first place amongst the elegant 
boarding estabHshments of Europe. It was in this 
agreeable society he first made the acquaintance of Mr 
Holroyd — afterwards Lord Sheffield. The two men were 
drawn to each other by the similarity of their tastes, and 
the friendship then formed between them was destined 
to be life-long. On the springing up of this happy ac- 
quaintanceship, Gibbon in his " Memoirs of his Life and 
Writings " makes a delicate and philosophical observation. 
"Our lives," says he, "are in the power of chance, and 
a slight variation on either side, in time or place, might 
have deprived me of a friend, whose activity in the 
ardour of youth was always prompted by a benevolent 
heart, and directed by a strong understanding." The 
society at Lausanne was much as he had left it, only 
Voltaire had gone to Ferney where he paid him a visit. 
Mdlle. Curchod he did not see. With the old scenes 
his old habits came back upon him, and he now began a 
severe and systematic course of study. He applied him- 



32 Maste7^s in History. ' 

self with enormous diligence to the topography of old 
Rome, the science of medals, and the ancient geography 
of Italy. It was now beginning to be plainly evident 
whither the bent of his genius was leading him. It 
would fill at least two pages of this book to record the 
names of the Latin works he perused. Nor was his 
reading done hastily. He sat with a pen in his hand 
and took notes as he went. Nor, again, were these notes 
left in a crude form j he gathered them all up into an 
elaborate treatise on the towns, provinces, and nations of 
ancient Italy. This work was his guide in his Trans- 
alpine expedition. And thus it was after eleven months' 
hard intellectual labour at Lausanne " he was armed for 
his Italian journey," and for making the acquaintance- 
ship of that city which had been the centre of most of 
his thinking since childhood, and about whose walls his 
historic imagination had ever flown in narrower or 
wider circles. 

Leaving Lake Leman behind him as he had left Paris, 
he climbed Mount Cenis on the back of an elephant, 
passed through Turin and Genoa, and by the road of 
Bologna and the Apennines he at last arrived at 
Florence, "where during the heat of the summer months," 
he reposed from June to September. After leaving 
Florence, and passing through Pisa, he arrived in 
Rome in the beginning of October. The impression the 
city made on the historian of its empire can never be 
given in other than his own words : — " My temper is not 
very susceptible of enthusiasm, and the enthusiasm 
which I do not feel I have ever scorned to affect. But 
at the distance of twenty-five years I can neither forget 
nor express the strong emotions which agitated my mind 
as I first approached and entered the eternal city. After 
a sleepless night, I trod, with a lofty step, the ruins of the 



Edward Gibbon. 33 

Forum ; each memorable spot where Romulus stood, or 
Tully spoke, or Caesar fell, was at once present to my 
eye ; and several days of intoxication were lost or 
enjoyed before I could descend to a cool and minute 
investigation. My guide was Mr Byers, a Scotch 
antiquary of experience and taste; but in the daily 
labour of eighteen weeks, the powers of attention were 
sometimes fatigued, till I was myself qualified, in a last 
review, to select and study the capital works of ancient 
and modern art." It will satisfy the curious to know 
that it was in the eternal city itself that the idea of his 
great work flashed upon Gibbon's mind. " It was at 
Rome, on the 15th October 1764, as I sat musing amid 
the ruins of the Capitol while the bare-footed fryars were 
singing vespers in the Temple of Jupiter, that the idea 
of writing the decline and fall of the city first started to 
my mind. But my original plan was circumscribed by 
the decay of the city rather than of the empire : and 
though my reading and reflections began to point 
toward that object, some years elapsed, and several 
avocations intervened, before I was seriously engaged in 
the execution of that laborious work." 

Gibbon's return to the West was more rapid than his 
progress Eastward had been. He had intended on his 
way home to visit the southern provinces of France, but 
receiving urgent letters he could only stay a fortnight in 
Paris. On his arrival at the French capital he found 
that Mdlle. Curchod was already settled there as the 
wife of M. Necker. So far from their avoiding each other, 
which would certainly have been the case had either been 
conscious of having acted a dishonourable part, they 
associated with each other on the footing of their old 
friendship, and M. Necker received Gibbon to his house 
every day with unaffected cordiality. In the most 

(2) n 



34 Masters in History. 

playful terms did Gibbon describe the meeting to his 
friend Holroyd. "The Curchod I saw in Paris, and 
she was very proud of me, and the husband particularly 
civil. Could they insult me more cruelly. ... It is 
making an old lover of mighty Httle consequence. She 
is as handsome as ever and much genteeler : seems 
pleased with her wealth rather than proud of it," etc., etc. 
The pen of the historian could run Hghtly at times, 
and we believe it ran not the less lightly on such a theme 
as Mdlle. Curchod, as it could convey nothing but the 
pure memories of the writer. 

After an interval of two years and five months, Gibbon 
again drove through the summer dust and solitude of 
London, and on the 25th June 1765 he arrived at his 
father's house. The period from this date up to the time 
of his father's death, five years later, can only be filled up 
with tolerable accuracy. He began to think with regret 
of the aimlessness of his past Hfe. When he looked 
round him he saw his friends for the most part married, 
and all devoted to certain professions invested with 
power, and commanding the respect of others and on the 
high road to wealth and honour. Had he only taken to 
trade or business, had he only studied law or sought, 
through divinity classes, "the fat slumbers of the Church," 
things might have been with him as with others. As it 
was, he found himself now an individual of no considera- 
tion and with neither part nor lot in the bustling world 
about' him. These serious anxieties were increased by 
domestic misapprehensions. His father for long had 
been living above his income, his position every year was 
getting more and more embarrassed, and his creditors 
more and more clamorous. The outlook for Gibbon was 
consequently sufficiently dark, and he conceived there 



Edward Gibbon. 35 

could only be before him an old age without either 
inheritance or the fruits of industry. 

Such gloomy forebodings did not, however, damp the 
ardour of his mind. It is to his credit that at this crisis 
he remained true to his scholarly habits. At this time he 
was joined by Deyverdun. His friend was in even a 
worse plight than himself. His father had squandered 
his fortune, and an unfortunate love affair had thrown him 
from his position at the Russian court, and he was now, 
without any visible means of subsistence, cast upon the 
world. Brethren in misfortune as they were, they could 
still be serviceable to each other. Gibbon procured for 
his friend a clerkship in the office of the Secretary of 
State, and Deyverdun translated for his old acquaintance 
German works bearing on the subject of the history of 
Switzerland which he proposed to write. Two years 
were spent by Gibbon in collecting materials, but away 
" from the archives and libraries of the Swiss republic," 
the result was not satisfactory, and the opening chapters 
having been severely handled at a meeting of foreigners 
in London, the work was there and then finally abandoned. 
But no sooner was the project of the Swiss history cast 
to the wind, than Gibbon planned along with Deyverdun 
the issue of a work bearing the title of " Memoires 
Litteraires de la Grande Bretagne," but the joint con- 
tributors finding it brought more reputation than emolu- 
ment, it too, after the issue of two volumes, was 
abandoned. This issue of works in the' French tongue 
was an undoubted mistake, but it took Gibbon some 
time to find out that in the first place he must write for 
Englishmen and not Europeans. 

After two successive literary failures, and exasperated 
by the complexion of domestic affairs, he was in a very 
proper mood for polemical writing, and he got rid of 



2,6 Masters in History. 

some of the spleen that was consuming him about the 
nature of things in general, by writing certain bitter 
" Critical Observations on the Sixth Book of the ^neid." 
The little work is characterized by great elasticity of style, 
but as it is nothing else than a specimen of special plead- 
ing, it has never been regarded as an authority, and has 
long since become obsolete. 

In these five years immediately subsequent to his 
return from his Italian tour, it is evident from many hints 
that his religious views had again undergone a complete 
change. It is remarkable while he speaks with the 
utmost frankness of the causes which brought about his 
perversion to Romanism, and of the paths by which he 
was led back to Protestantism once again, he maintains 
a careful reticence on every matter connected with his 
second and final departure from the opinions of the 
Reformation. But although his silence is studied, there 
can be no doubt the break with Protestantism was com- 
plete. What set of opinions he adopted does not appear, 
but whatever they were he was henceforth to be allowed 
to hold them in peace. The severe logic and kindly 
solicitude of another Pavilliard were not to deliver 
him from the mists of philosophy as they had rescued 
him from the errors of Romanism. It was in these years 
*' he flattered himself, that an age of light and of liberty 
would receive, without scandal, an inquiry into the human 
causes of the progress and establishment of Christianity." 
It was in them the foundation of the two lamentable 
chapters that conclude the first volume of " The Decline 
and Fall " were laid in the mind of the author. These 
two chapters which he was feign afterwards to confess, 
had he anticipated the stir they would make in the world, 
had he known the wounds they would inflict on men whose 
purity of life commanded universal respect, had he guessed 



Edward Gibbon. 37 

the pain they would bring to many whose only endeavour 
was to work out in their conduct the spirit of Christian 
self-sacrifice, he never would have written at all. Nor 
can the present writer be accused of dealing hardly with 
the memory of the great historian, if he points to a certain 
moral inconsistency in a man cherishing the spirit of 
these chapters, and all the while casting a longing eye 
towards " the fat slumbers of the Church." 

Whilst Gibbon was contemplating his future work at 
" an awful distance," whilst he was advancing from the 
wish to the hope, from the hope to the design, and from 
the design to the execution, his life was darkened and 
his energies prostrated — for it is a great mistake to 
suppose Gibbon was the selfish Epicurean he is often 
called — by the death of his father. This event took 
place on the loth Nov. 1770, when the elder Gibbon 
was in the sixty- fourth year of his age. Although the 
father had long been living above his income, and his 
whole estate was left in a questionable position, still he 
had been a kind, indulgent, and loving parent, and the 
son was profoundly affected at his decease. " His grace- 
ful person," says the historian, "polite address, gentle 
manners, and unaffected cheerfulness, recommended him 
to the favour of every company ; and in the change of 
times and opinions, his liberal spirit had long since 
delivered him from the zeal and prejudice of a Tory 
education. I submitted to the order of nature ; and my 
grief was soothed by the conscious satisfaction that I had 
discharged all the duties of filial piety." 

The poet may work in poverty, but the historian can't. 
The labours of the latter are so prolonged and engross- 
ing and the tools he works with often so difiicult to be 
had, that some degree of riches is positively necessary 
before they can be carried on. Great riches may un- 



38 Masters in History. 

doubtedly have a tendency to relax the activities of the 
historian, but great poverty must as undoubtedly kill 
them altogether. It seemed possible at this crisis that 
" The Decline and Fall " would be throttled through the 
indigence of the writer. Gibbon, however, after he had 
retired to London and taken up house at No. 7 Bentinck 
Street, near Manchester Square, and after all his father's 
affairs had been wound up, found to his satisfaction, that 
a moderate competency had been secured to him from 
the general wreck. If his income was such that he could 
not dispense with carefulness, still it enabled him to be- 
come a member of Boodle's, White's, and Almack's, to 
give occasionally a thorough-going bachelor dinner to 
which Reynolds and Goldsmith were invited, and to sit 
down without fear from importunate tradesmen to his 
studies and historical researches. Besides the painter 
and the poet just named, Gibbon was brought into inti- 
mate contact with Dr Johnson, Burke, Garrick, Colman, 
Sir WiUiam Jones, Fox, Sheridan and Adam Smith, the 
poHtical economist. Amongst all the literary gossip of 
that time, it is a matter of regret that we have no genuine 
account of Gibbon's appearance in society. Had he so 
minded, the Exquisite Esquire of Strawberry Hill, might 
have given us a valuable sketch of the portly and accom- 
pHshed author of " The Decline and Fall." His manners, 
however, were so uniformly unobtrusive, and his general 
bearing so much in accord with the society in which he 
moved, that he never attracted any undue attention to 
himself. Had he been less elegant in his manners, had 
he been the unfortunate possessor of any peculiar foible, 
we may rest assured he would not have escaped the 
observation of the critics of his time. He was not 
destitute of humour, but wanting the ready wit which 
can set the table in a roar. His conversation has not 



Edward Gibbon, 39 

contributed a single bon-mot to the thousands recorded 
of the hterary men of his time. He moved in society 
the perfect gentleman, and if to its polite history his 
words never give an intellectual sally, his life never con- 
tributes a single oddity. 

At his home in Bentinck Street Gibbon now addressed 
himself to the work of his history. " At the outset," he 
writes, " all was dark and doubtful : even the title of the 
work, the true era of the Decline and Fall of the Empire, 
the limits of the introduction, the division of the chapters, 
and the order of the narrative, and I was often tempted 

to cast away the labour of seven years Many 

experiments were made before I could hit the middle 
tone between a dull chronicle and a rhetorical declam- 
ation : three times did I compose the first chapter, and 
twice the second and third, before I was tolerably 
satisfied with their efiect In the remainder of the way I 
advanced with a more equal and easy pace; but the 
fifteenth and sixteenth chapters have been reduced by 
three successive revisals, from a large volume to their 
present size : and they might still be compressed, with- 
out any loss of facts or sentiments." 

It has been complained that while Gibbon grew 
garrulous over his earlier studies, conversions and per- 
versions, it would have been of far more importance to 
the world in general had he said less about these, and 
more about those three years he spent in the com- 
position of the first volume of the " Decline and Fall." 
The point of the complaint is more apparent than real. 
When we look into the matter we find that Gibbon's 
silence about those years must have been largely 
owing to the fact that he had little to tell the reader 
which would not have been a repetition of what he 
already knew. During his whole life the Historian 



40 Masters in History. 

had been collecting materials for his work, and often 
consciously, often unconsciously, training himself for 
his task. When, therefore, he settled near Manchester 
Square, he was fully prepared : his stores were by him or 
deposited in his memory, his mind had received its 
appropriate discipline, and when the time for work did 
come, there was little else for him to do than what he 
plainly tells us — to seek out an appropriate style to 
convey his thoughts, and show continued discrimination 
in moulding into form the raw materials of his life-long 
studies. Mankind have ever displayed a natural curiosity 
to be taken into the workshop of authors, but authors 
themselves have ever been careful to keep their study 
doors locked against all prying inquisitiveness into the 
secrets of their profession. But that they have told little 
concerning the composition of their works is doubtless 
owing to the fact that they had little to tell: writers 
seem puzzled to account for their own productions. 
Dickens promised to tell us all about the conception of 
" Pickwick," but what he told threw no light upon the 
subject. It only amounts to this, that "somehow or other 
it came into his head." Poe wrote an elaborate essay 
telling, or professing to tell, how he composed the 
" Raven," how he thought it out and elaborated it until 
he made it what it is. He proposed to tell us all that, 
but it is agreed on all hands his essay is a fiction. 
Account for it as we may, no writer of eminence has 
ever taken any one into his intellectual laboratory. 
Scott never did, and of all men, he • was the most 
approachable. Burns never did, and he was the most 
open-hearted of men. Voltaire never did. Goethe 
never did. Milton never did. If then Gibbon had 
more to tell than what he has told, he keeps his secrets 
in good company. 



Edward Gibbon. 41 

But in whatever dubiousness we are left with regard to 
Gibbon's methods of composition, there certainly can be 
no doubt whatever about the quality of the work performed. 
The first volume of the " Decline and Fall" involved the 
settling of both method and style for the whole work ; 
but still, although the first volume took longer than any 
of the other five that followed it, and the hand of the 
writer grew firmer and more rapid as he advanced, it 
reflects all the beauties of the other parts, and shews at 
once the vast powers and resources which Gibbon had 
brought to bear on his special subject. 

Amongst the first things that arrest the attention of the 
reader of the "Decline and Fall," is the dignity and 
elegance of the style. From the first sentence to the last 
there is no appearance of falling away, and subjects of 
secondary importance in themselves derive a primary 
significance from the grace and beauty of the diction. 
Vast though the work be, there is no page of it where the 
hand of the writer seems wearied or his energies relaxed. 
The high literary notes struck in the first chapters, are 
heard without diminution of either strength or volume in 
the last. And if there is never any sign of flagging, 
neither is there ever any appearance of haste. The 
goal is in the far distance, but one could never guess the 
author had ever once looked at it, or cherished a single 
desire to attain it. One feels there is nothing left out, 
nothing passed over, nothing vaguely comprehended, and 
with one or two exceptions, nothing misunderstood. 
The historian never gives the slightest sign that he feels 
his burden, and his varied themes he handles with so 
much facility that he seems to play with them. It was 
only his thorough preparation that could have made him 
feel so much at home in his work. He was conscious 
that he had a perfect acquaintance with his subject, knew 



42 Masters in History. 

the whole range of literature bearing upon it, and was 
as intimately acquainted with its minutest as with its 
most outstanding details. With so much to work on, 
not the least difficult part the author had to perform, was 
to show that he was neither clogged nor hampered by the 
multiplicity of his materials. The ease with which he 
manipulated his heavy references is only surpassed by the 
power he displayed in moulding obdurate chronological 
events to suit his literary form. Had Gibbon possessed 
this power in a less degree, had he been only capable of 
dealing with facts and dates in a manner less thorough- 
going and masterly, he had certainly failed to infuse 
into his narrative its grand panoramic effect. For this 
is true ""of Gibbon's History and pertains to it, and is 
characteristic of it, more than of any other, that whilst it is 
a history, it is also at the same time a series of carefully 
executed and artistically wrought pictures. It is true we 
hear in his stately prose the sound of the Roman phalanx, 
but it is also true in his elaborate grouping we see the 
battalions of the empire drawn up in battle array. What 
has been said of the work by Mr Freeman is deserving 
of quotation : — " That Gibbon should ever be displaced 
seems impossible. That wonderful man monopolised, 
so to speak, the historical genius and the historical 
learning of a whole generation, and left little indeed of 
either for his contemporaries. He remains the one 
historian of the eighteenth century, whom modern 
research has neither set aside or threatened to set aside. 
We may correct and improve upon the stores which have 
been opened since Gibbon's time; we may write again large 
parts of his story from other and often truer and more whole- 
some points of view, but the work of Gibbon as a whole, 
as the encyclopaedic history of 1300 years, as the grandest 
of historical designs, carried out alike with wonderful 



Edward Gibbon. 43 

power, and with wonderful accuracy, must ever keep its 
place. Whatever else is read, Gibbon must be read." 

Apart from the characteristics above enumerated, the 
reader of Gibbon is struck by the display of many sub- 
sidiary qualifications. His topographical knowledge is 
marvellous. He seems to have possessed that power 
held by Bulwer Lytton and others, of being able to 
describe with absolute faithfulness and graphic effect 
places he had never seen. With his minute knowledge 
of places, his geographical information was commensurate, 
and this latter again was adorned with the fruits of 
laborious scientific study, so that as Gibbon said himself, 
*' the natural historian might have tracked him in his own 
snow." His insight into character, if occasionally super- 
ficial was, on the whole, worthy of his scholarship, and little 
stray incidents in men's lives that others '' would have 
passed by unnoticed, he had the happy knack of so intro- 
ducing into his narrative as to illustrate their characters and 
supply keys to their conduct." How the historian could 
seize on a trivial incident and make it tell, the following 
paragraph will show. " While Julian struggled with the 
almost insuperable difficulties of his situation, the silent 
hours of the night were devoted to study and contempla- 
tion. Whenever he closed his eyes in short and inter- 
rupted slumbers, his mind was agitated by painful 
anxiety; nor can it be thought surprising that the Genius 
of the Empire should once more appear before him, cover- 
ing with a funereal veil his head and his horn of abund- 
ance, and slowly retiring from the imperial tent. The 
monarch started from his couch, and stepping forth to 
refresh his weary spirits with the coolness of the mid- 
night air, he beheld a fiery meteor which shot athwart the 
sky and suddenly vanished. Julian was convinced that 
he had seen the menacing countenance of the God of 



44 Masters in History, 

war : the council which he summoned of Tuscan Haru- 
spices, unanimously pronounced that he should abstain 
from action ; but on this occasion necessity and reason 
were more prevalent than superstition, and the trumpets 
_sounded at the break of day." 

The first volume of the history, published in February 
1776, although it was in some respects inferior to the 
two that immediately followed it, met with a most hearty 
reception from the public. The first impression of a 
thousand was exhausted in a few days, and a second 
and third got ready as quickly as the old hand-presses 
of the time would allow, were scarcely adequate to meet 
the demand. Although Gibbon professed to regard the 
publication of the work with the complacency of a 
philosopher, he made no attempt to conceal his joy at 
its success. That he had done his duty with diligence 
and accuracy, he had the testimony of his own conscience, 
and the vanity he indulged at the thought of " his book 
being on every table, and almost on every toilette, — the 
historian crowned by the taste or fashion of the day, nor 
the general voice disturbed by the barking of any profane 
critic," is very readily excusable. But along with the 
applause of the people came also the praise of the 
learned, and if Gibbon for his own part, refused to allow 
his name to be put forward as one of the triumvirate 
of English historians, still he accepted the hand of 
brotherhood held out to him by Robertson and Hume. 

Meanwhile Gibbon had entered parliament. One 
morning some short time after the Historian had got out 
of bed, and just as he was destroying an army of barbar- 
ians, a double knock was heard at the door of No. 7 
Bentinck Street. It was a messenger from Mr (afterwards 
Lord) Eliot. This gentleman had married Gibbon's first 
cousin, and by his friendship he found himself after the 



Edward Gibbon, 45 

general election of 1774, member for the borough of 
Liskeard. Had Gibbon cared to make for himself a name 
as a politician he had now before him a splendid oppor- 
tunity. He was already well known as a man of scholarly 
habits, he was in the course of a few months to be 
famous as an author, and burning questions were every 
night debated in thronged and excited houses. There 
were also on both sides foemen worthy of the finest steel. 
Lord North was the government leader, " a statesman of 
spotless integrity, a consummate master of debate, who 
could wield with equal dexterity the arms of reason and 
of ridicule." The leader was supported by men who 
have come to be hardly less famous than himself. The 
most notable of these were Thurlow and Wedderburne. 
The latter statesman was afterwards created Lord Chan- 
cellor, and successively illustrated the title of Lord 
Loughborough and Earl of Rosslyn. It is enough to 
say that on the opposition benches sat Fox and Burke. 
Here surely was an arena where a man of Gibbon's attain- 
ments might have been ambitious to excel. Nothing, 
however, would tempt him to "get up" in the house. 
It may have been that while he sat on the Commons 
benches his heart was in his study, it may have been that 
he found himself wanting in the physical qualities of 
the orator — "the intrepid energy of mind and voice, 
vincente77i strepitus et natwn rebus agendis" or it may 
have been, and probably was, that he was unduly afraid of 
risking as a speaker the personal reputation he had 
gained as a writer. At any rate, during the whole of the 
eight sessions he sat in parliament " prudence," he says, 
condemned him to acquiesce in the humble station of a 
mute." Except on one occasion, when he published his 
"Memoire Justificatif," to vindicate against the French, 
and in their own language, the justice of the British arms, 



46 Masters in History. 

he rendered no service to his party further than supporting 
them by his vote. We need not wonder that such feeble 
friendship was little appreciated in those exciting times, 
when the independence of America was a question every 
night before the House, or that Gibbon had to confess 
his chagrin when in the division of the spoil he found 
himself wholly forgotten. The Historian might affect to 
be careless about how his party vote was appreciated, 
but he could not be careless about the fact that he was 
regularly excluded from the emoluments of office. We 
fear it was with Gibbon as with too many, he entered 
parliament from no high sense of public duty, from no 
particular wish to benefit the public service, but only 
froi^ the hope that he might secure an appointment, the 
salary from which would augment his private income. 
Gibbon, left to himself, would possibly never have 
dreamt of entering parliament at all, but the opportunity 
put before him, along with the chances of bettering his 
income, were not to be put aside. 

At first his style of living in Bentinck Street had been 
conceived in the spirit of his yearly allowance from the 
remainder of his Father's estate, but by and by, what 
with " the giving of the prettiest dinners in the world," 
and the society which more and more courted his 
presence, he soon found himself in his parent's position, 
living beyond his income, and consequently running into 
debt. This b'eing the state of his domestic affairs, his 
appointment to the post of one of the Lords' Com- 
missioners of Trade and Plantations, must have come 
opportunely. He got this berth by the influence of his 
friends Eliot and Wedderburne, and the salary attached 
was about ;^8oo a year. It came to him most acceptably, 
although he was not to enjoy it long. The Board came 
under the lash of Burke, and Gibbon in a footnote to 



Edward Gibbon. 47 

his "Memoirs," says, "he never could forget the delight 
with which that diffusive and ingenious orator Mr Burke 
was heard by all sides of the house, and even by those 
whose existence he proscribed." The orator pronounced 
sentence of death on the Board in the following terms : 
" This board, sir, has had both its original formation and 
its regeneration in a job. In a job it was conceived, 
and in a job its mother brought it forth. This board is 
a sort of temperate bed of influence : a sort of gently 
ripening hothouse where eight members of Parliament 
receive salaries of a thousand a-year, for a certain given 
time, in order to mature at a proper season a claim to 
two thousand for doing less." The humour of the 
orator's address was too much for the Historian, and 
whilst Burke was inditing his sentence, Gibbon was 
chuckling on the side benches. Notwithstanding the 
efforts of the opposition, and it must be confessed, the 
goodness of their case, the Board was only aboHshed 
by the smallest majority. The numbers were 207 
against 199 votes. 

Gibbon's parliamentary life has been attacked with the 
utmost acrimony, but it cannot really be said to admit of 
such bitter representation as that to which it has been 
subjected. It is true it was dominated by no great social 
purpose and regulated by no political ideal. It is also 
true it was entered on without enthusiasm and carried on 
for no other end than to secure the Historian's own 
advancement by rendering steady if not servile obedience 
to the dictates of party. But take it for all in all, it was 
not much better, not much worse, than the political lives 
of many members of ParHament of his time. Granted 
that his object was earthly, and that he entered parliament 
to serve his own ends and add to his own income, still 
where is the justice of visiting Gibbon with a condemna- 



48 Masters in History. 

tion which hundreds of other Members of Parliament 
have merited without receiving, and merited too in a way 
which Gibbon never merited, for certainly if a sin con- 
fessed is half condoned, in estimating the Historian's 
parHamentary career we should not forget these words are 
his own : "I went into Parliament without patriotism and 
without ambition, and all my views tended to the con- 
venient and respectable place of a lord of trade." We are 
persuaded the condemnation of Gibbon cannot be sought 
for on these lines. His condemnation is this, that the 
object he had in view was an object which however it 
might have satisfied some men, should never have satisfied 
him. Had he been a mercenary whig mill owner, or a fat 
Tory grazier, his parliamentary conduct might have been 
passed without either note or comment, but because he 
was Edward Gibbon, the scholar, the philosopher, the 
historian, all in one, there is a feeling of disappointment 
when it is found his public life, giving as it did so many 
rare opportunities, shewed no signs whatever of his superior 
enlightenment. 

With such a public career in view it is pleasing to turn 
to the more congenial pursuits of the friend and the 
historian. After the publication of his first volume 
Gibbon visited Paris, and became the constant guest of 
the Neckers. His fame had gone before, and he was 
received with open arms by the most cultivated society 
of the^ French capital. Gibbon's head could not be 
easily turned, and all his laurels he wore with becoming 
meekness. If it was the case that Madame Necker when 
he met her after his Italian tour in the first flush of her 
magnificence just affected to treat him with the slightest 
condescension. Gibbon now with the literary world at his 
feet was in rare position to have returned the most refined 
incivility. No such encounter, however, occurred, and 



Edward Gibbon. 49 

Edward Gibbon, the great historian, had just as simple 
and transparent a heart to Madame Necker amid the 
blandishments of Paris, as the young English student had 
to Mdlle. Curchod amid the wilds of Burgundy. Gibbon 
spent a most enjoyable six months in Paris, and next 
year he had the honour of entertaining his kind French 
hosts at his quiet bachelor-home in Bentinck Street. 
Many as were the calls which London Hfe made on his 
time, still he never forgot his work, and his brain was 
never quicker, his pen never more facile, than when these 
calls were most numerous. By 1781 he had two other 
quartos completed, and after his parliamentary career was 
over he was able to write, " My skill was improved by 
practice, my diligence perhaps was quickened by the loss 
of office ;''and excepting the last chapter, I had finished 
the fourth volume before I sought a retreat on the banks 
of the^Leman Lake." 

Somehow or other it never occurs to the mind of an 
English gentleman, when he finds himself in straitened 
circumstances, that he can begin the policy of domestic 
retrenchment in his own country. When he finds his 
expenditure outrunning his income his thoughts seem to 
turn naturally to continental life. Gibbon's action at the 
conclusion of his public life accorded with the national 
instinct. Wishing to free himself from a growing burden 
of debt amid the dust of London which he loved, and 
amid the' city's extravagance which he loved still more, 
he cherished visions of the quiet of Lausanne and the 
inspiring scenery amongst which he had spent laborious 
years a quarter of a century ago. Since his friend 
Deyverdun had worked with him in London fortune had 
smiled on him, and he was now staying at Lausanne in 
an excellent house bequeathed to him by his aunt. 
Gibbon wrote to his friend promising to join him there 
(2) 13 



50 Masters in History. 

should it suit his convenience and undertaking, while | 
Deyverdun possessed the property, the whole expense of '' 
the common house. Deyverdun, like Gibbon, w^as a 
bachelor, and he eagerly entered into the arrangements 
of his friend. The letters that passed between the old 
acquaintances have ever been esteemed models of 
elegance, and hardly to be surpassed in that form of com- 
position. Gibbon disclosed his scheme in these words : 
— " You live in a charming house, I see from here my 
apartments, the rooms we shall share with one another, 
our table, our walks. But such a marriage is worthless, 
unless it suits both parties, and I easily feel that circum- 
stances, new tastes and connections may frustrate a 
design which appeared charming in the distance. To 
settle my mind and to avoid regrets, you must be as 
frank as I have been, and give me a true picture, ex- 
ternal and internal, of George Deyverdun." To this 
epistle the friend of the Historian made answer : " Call 
to mind, my dear friend, that I saw you enter Parliament 
with regret, and I think I was only too good a prophet, 
I am sure that career has caused you more privations 
than joys, more pains than pleasures. Ever since I have 
known you I have been convinced that your happiness 
lay in your study and in society, and that any path which 
led you elsewhere was a departure from happiness. By 
making this retreat to Switzerland, besides the beauty of 
the country, and the pleasures of its society, you will 
acquire two blessings which you have lost, liberty and 
competence. You will also be useful, your works will 
also continue to enlighten us, and independently of your 
talents, the man of honour and refinement is never use- 
less. You used to like my house and garden; what 
would you do now ? On the first floor which looks on 
the declivity of Ouchy, I have fitted up an apartment 



Edward Gibbon. 51 

which is enough for me. I have a servants' room, two 
salons, two cabinets. On a level with the terrace two 
other salons^ of which one serves as a dining-room in 
summer, and the other a drawing-room for company. I 
have arranged three more rooms between the house and 
the coach-house, so that I can offer you all the large 
apartment, which consists actually of eleven rooms, 
great and small, looking east and south, not splendidly 
furnished, I allow, but with a certain elegance which I 
hope you will like. I have purchased the vineyard 
below the garden, and in front of the house made it into 
a lawn, which is watered by the water of the fountain. 
In a word, strangers come to see the place, and in spite 
of my pompous description of it, I think you will like it. 
If you come you will find a tranquillity you cannot have 
in London, and a friend who has not passed a single day 
without thinking of you, and who, in spite of his defects, 
his foibles, and his inferiority, is still one of the com- 
panions that suit you best." 

After all matters had been arranged satisfactorily with 
Deyverdun, still the strength of home associations was 
like to retain him in London. Lord Sheffield was dead 
against his going, Mrs Gibbon was loath to part with her 
son, and his heart declared if he now went abroad he 
would not be likely to see his affectionate Aunt Porten 
again. Gibbon was by no means a strong-willed man 
when personal considerations influenced him. Here, 
however, he showed praiseworthy resolution. By one 
effort he broke his London fetters, passed over West- 
minster Bridge in a chaise, and so bade a long, if not a 
last farewell to the fimium et opes strepitumque Romae. 
On the 27th September 1783 he arrived after a tedious 
journey in Lausanne. 

Many changes had taken place since last he had left 



52 Masters in History. 

the shores of the Lake of Geneva. His older acquaint- 
ances had left the stage, "virgins were ripened into 
matrons, and children were grown to the age of man- 
hood." That his old master was gone we are left to 
surmise, for he nowhere makes any definite allusion. 
Where there had been so many changes, he was gratified 
to find the manners of the people simple and unaffected 
as they used to be, and the heart of his friend as warm 
as he had expected. Much as Gibbon had loved the 
smoke of London — loving it even as Charles Lamb 
loved "the sweet shady side of Cheapside and the silver- 
smiths' shops," — he could not help rejoicing he had 
escaped from the intrigues of party. He was flattered, 
too, to think — for there was not wanting in his character 
a thin vein of vanity, — that while, in London, he had 
been lost in the crowd, he was now, in Lausanne, an 
individual of consideration, and ranking and exchanging 
civilities with the best families. It was to him also a 
congenial change to leave his small house in Bentinck 
Street — " a house between a street and a stable-yard " for 
the spacious and convenient mansion of Deyverdun. It 
was well for Gibbon he formed the manly resolution to 
leave London, and once for all have done with practical 
politics. It was well he formed it at the time he did, for 
not three months after leaving the capital the Coalition 
Ministry was wrecked, and many public men like Fox 
had their reputations almost irretrievably ruined. His 
part in Parliament had never been glorious, but it is just 
possible it had been still more inglorious had he been in 
it then. Gibbon showed how he valued his continental 
retirement. " My friends had been kindly apprehensive 
that I should not be able to exist in a Swiss town at the 
foot of the Alps, after having so long conversed with the 
first men of the first cities of the world. Such lofty con- 



Edward Gibbon. 53 

nections may attract the envious and gratify the vain; 
but I am too modest, or too proud, to rate my own value 
by that of my associates; and whatsoever may be the 
fame of learning or genius, experience has shewn me 
that the cheaper qualifications of politeness and good 
sense are of more useful currency in the commerce of 
life." 

Gibbon's life at Lausanne was all he could wish it to 
be ; \X was in the most perfect accord with his scholarly 
tastes. The scenery was ever to him a source of delight. 
He was occasionally visited by eminent individuals from 
France, Prussia, and England. His income was equal to 
his circumstances, and while M. Necker and his wife, now 
exiled from France, were not many miles away, he had 
always near him his dear and accomplished friend Dey- 
verdun, whom to know the more was to love the better. 
In this environment the Historian sat down to calm 
steady work, and as he never moved, for the next four 
years, ten miles from Lausanne, and only exchanged 
visits with his most intimate friends, the fruits of his 
extraordinary application soon manifested themselves. 
Begun in March 1782, he ended his fourth volume in 
June 1784, begun the next month of that year, he ended 
his fifth on 1st May 1786, and begun on 18th of that 
same month, he finished his history on the 27th June 
1787. The following passage from Gibbon's Memoir ^o 
often garbled and misquoted, will not cease to interest 
till the Decline and Fall of the Roman ^w/Z/r^has. become 
an obsolete work. " It was not till after many designs, 
and many trials, that I preferred, as I still prefer, the 
method of grouping my picture' by nations]; I and '.the 
seeming neglect of chronological order is surely compen- 
sated by the superior merits of interest and perspicuity. 
The style of the first^ volume is, in my' opinion, somewhat 



54 Masters in Histoi^y. 

crude and elaborate ; in the second and third it is ripened 
into ease, correctedness and numbers; but in the three 
last I may have been seduced by the facility of my pen, 
and the constant habit of speaking one language and 
writing another may have infused some mixture of 
Gallic idioms. Happily for my eyes I have always 
closed my studies with the day, and commonly with the 
morning ; and a long, but temperate labour has been 
accomplished without fatiguing either mind or body; 
but when I computed the remainder of my time and my 
task, it was apparent that, according to the season of 
publication, the delay of a month would be productive 
of that of a year. I was now straining for the goal and in 
the last winter many evenings w^ere borrowed from the 
social pleasures of Lausanne. I could now wish that a 
pause, an interval, had been allowed for serious revisal. 
I have presumed to mark the moment of conception : I 
shall now commemorate the hours of my final deliverance. 
It was on the day, or rather night, of the 27 th of June 
1787, between the hours of eleven and twelve, that I 
wrote the last lines of the last page in a summer-house 
in my garden. After laying down my pen, I took several 
turns in a berceau, or covered walk of acacias, which com- 
mands a prospect of the country, the lake and the 
mountain. The air was temperate, the sky was serene, 
the silver orb of the moon was reflected from the waters, 
and all nature was silent. I will not dissemble the first 
emotions of joy on recovery of my freedom, and, perhaps, 
the establishment of my fame. But my pride was soon 
humbled, and a sober melancholy was spread over my 
mind by the idea that I had taken an everlasting leave of 
an old and agreeable companion, and that whatever might 
be the future of my history, the fife of the Historian must 
be short and precarious." Thus was the work concluded 



Edward Gibbon. 55 

after the direct labour of fourteen— Gibbon himself says 
twenty— years, and the indirect labour of a life. Thus 
Gibbon paid his debt to the world and society for all of 
friendship and pleasure he had got from them, and thus 
the copestone was placed on that gorgeous literary fabric 
of which Mr Haley the poet and the friend of the 
Historian sang, 

" As ages multiply, its fame shall rise. 

And earth must perish ere its splendour dies." 
Now a man unusually heavy and corpulent and with 
an inveterate dislike to everything involving bodily exer- 
tion, still he repaired to London immediately he had 
concluded his MS., and in the April of 1788 he had the 
satisfaction of seeing his work safely through the press. 
On this occasion his reception in England was most 
flattering to himself. He was satisfied with the general 
civilities of the world, and all party resentment being 
now lost in oblivion, as he was no man's rival, no man 
was his enemy. He had the good fortune to be present 
at " the august spectacle of Mr Hasting's trial in West- 
minster Hall." He was moved by the eloquence of 
Sheridan and touched by the personal compliment paid 
him by the orator. The reference to the Historian was 
to the following effect. Sheridan said " The facts that 
made up the volume of the narrative were unparalleled in 
atrociousness, and that nothing equal in criminality was 
to be traced, either in ancient or modern history, in the 
correct periods of Tacitus or the luminous page of 
Gibbon." {Morniiig Chivnide, June 14, 1788). After 
the history had been given to the world the Historian 
was eager to return again to his loved Lausanne. The 
amusements of the city were no longer congenial to him. 
The clubs were filled with new faces and the older men 
were gone, the late dinners of the metropolis were mani- 



56 Masters in History. 

festly acting injuriously on his health, and so once more 
he broke through all the entreaties of his friends, and 
sought again on the shores of Lake Leman the scholarly 
companionship of his old and trusted friend. The joy 
of the meeting was terribly damped by the state of 
Deyverdun's health, and not long after Gibbon's return 
the ties that had bound the two men together were 
snapped. In the summer of 1789 Deyverdun succumbed 
to a long illness, and so while " that evening sun of July 
was shining on reapers amid peaceful woods and fields, 
on old women spinning in cottages, on ships far out on 
the silent main, on balls at the Orangerie of Versailles, 
where high-rouged dames were dancing with double- 
jacketted Hussar officers," it also shed its beams on 
Gibbon mourning the loss of his friend. 

Deyverdun's death touched the roots of Gibbon's 
nature, and he never recovered the shock. It mattered 
not that his friend had placed it in his power to occupy 
the house, with every spot, every walk, every bench, 
bringing back memories of the hours that could not be 
recalled and the conversations that could not be renewed, 
he found the state of his mind cast a gloom over the 
fairest scenes. It was in vain that Madame Necker 
tried to retain him amongst them, it was in vain that she 
asked him to come and be her husband's guest, that in 
their talks about old times the Historian might be led to 
forget his present melancholy and abandon his resolutions 
of once more returning to England. Every entreaty was 
vain, and another sad occurrence confirmed his purpose. 
So soon as he heard of Lady Shefiield's death, he set out 
for home, thus getting rid of the growing sadness of 
Lausanne associations and trusting to convey to one who 
had been more bereaved than himself the personal con- 
solations of a long and close friendship. Gibbon was , 



Edzvard Gibbon. 57 

made very welcome to Sheffield Place. The Historian 
could not have made the long journey without much 
suffering, and Lord Sheffield took the great pains to 
which Gibbon had put himself to be with him on such a 
sorrowful occasion as the most sincere testimony to the 
tenderness of his regard. Gibbon remained about four 
months with his Lordship. During that time he confined 
himself for the most part to library and dining-room and 
was seldom out of doors. His cherished aversion to 
out-door exercise had become chronic, and his long con- 
tinued neglect of the rules of health had undermined his 
constitution. He had ever an eager appetite, but it 
would have been well for him if he could have been con- 
tent with a plainer regimen. He was affected with the 
gout, yet he drank Madeira every day. The use of this 
sweet wine he regarded as " essential to his reputation." 
His treatment of his ailments was strange and unaccount- 
able. He was affected with the most serious disorders, 
yet he never once for a space of about thirty years either 
consulted a physician or mentioned the matter to his 
friends. When medical aid did come to such a man it 
is evident it could only come too late. The fact is, he 
who saw '' the giant form of empires on their way to ruin," 
was himself rapidly approaching his mortal Fall. Hap- 
pening when it did, his decease affords but another sad 
illustration of the vanity of human hopes. While he was 
looking forward to the enjoyment of "the autumnal 
feHcity " of his closing years, while he was weighing the 
probabilities, calculating the chances of existence, and 
flattering himself with the belief he might reasonably 
expect other fifteen years of life, death was on his very 
threshold. The Historian, no doubt, made the calculation 
calmly, but a footnote to the arithmetical problem shows 
the heart was not free from secret anxiety and foreboding. 



58 Masters m History. 






" Mr Buffon, from our disregard of the possibility 
death within the four-and-twenty hours, concludes that 
a chance, which falls below or rises above ten thousand 
to one, will never affect the hopes and fears of a reason- 
able man. The fact is true, but our courage is the effect 
of thoughtlessness, rather than of reflection. If a public 
lottery were drawn for the choice of an immediate 
victim, and if our name were subscribed on one of the 
ten thousand tickets, should ^ we be perfectly easy ? " The 
question put with so much force can only be answered 
in the line of the Historian's argument. It does not 
appear that Gibbon's mind was seriously disturbed at the 
thought of the approach of dissolution ; but that he dwelt 
wholly in a philosophical calm, and was unconcerned 
whether this solemn event in his life was near or far 
away, such a passage as the above plainly contradicts. 
The philosopher is not less a philosopher that he reflects 
in his own feelings the instincts of the race. 

After leaving Sheffield Place, Gibbon paid a visit of 
some days to his mother, and was glad to find her at her 
far advanced age possessed of all her faculties. He then 
settled in London, where his malady, a complication 
of dropsy and rupture, called for medical interference. 
Farquhar, an eminent surgeon, and two other doctors 
were consulted. The case was recognised to be serious. 
On Thursday the 14th November, he was tapped. He 
went through the operation with patience and even good 
humour, and after it, was able to be out at dinners and 
parties as usual. The following letter to Lord Sheffield 
has a melancholy interest, it being the last he ever wrote. 
It was of date the 7th January 1794 : "St James's, four 
o'clock, Tuesday. This date says everything. I was 
almost killed between Sheffield Place and East Grint- 
stead by hard, frozen, long and cross ruts, that would 



Edward Gibbon. 59 

disgrace the approach of an Indian wigwam. The rest 
was somewhat less painful, and I reached this place half 
dead, but not seriously feverish or ill. I found a dinner 
invitation from Lord Lucan ; but what are dinners to 
me? I wish they did not know of my departure. I 
catch the flying post. What an effort ! Adieu till 
Thursday or Friday." On the 13th January another 
operation was performed, but whilst he was relieved for 
the time, on the evening of next day he became very 
weak, and after being attended by his physician, his last 
articulate words were these to his valet-de-chambre, 
"Fourqtioi est ce que vous me quittez .?" If not his speech, 
he preserved his senses to the last, and in absolute 
tranquillity, and with his eyes half shut, near to the hour 
when he used to throw aside his books for the night — 
about a quarter before one, he ceased to breathe. He 
was fifty-seven years of age all but eighty-three days. 
The mortal remains of the Historian were deposited by 
Lord Sheffield in his family burying-place in Fletching 
Church, Sussex. 

The life of Edward Gibbon presents an unique feature 
in literary biography. On its intellectual side it was from 
first to last a steady and upward progress, and we will 
seek in vain for another example of such intense and 
prolonged devotion to a special task. Macaulay and 
Froude and Grote have excelled in other departments, 
but the whole streams of Gibbon's life flowed in one 
channel. The emotional side of his nature aflbrds a 
more rugged, but not nearly so pleasant a prospect. It 
cannot but be viewed with regret, and while he confessed 
it shewed " the failure of those hopes which will always 
tinge with a browner shade the evening of Hfe," still 
possibly his feeble religious vacillations had their cause 
in sources lying beyond himself His emotional nature 



6o Masters in History. 

lies by the side of his intellectual like a field run wild 
alongside a highly cultivated tract. In the future while 
others may write from truer points of view, there is little 
fear Gibbon's great work will be superseded. It will 
always remain a monument to colossal learning, and one 
of the finest expressions of historical genius. The 
days in which such men die mark eras and epochs, in the 
literary calendar they are 

" red-letter days. 
And richer than the songs of Grecian years." 



GEORGE GROTE. 



GEORGE GROTE 



As the names of Greece and Rome are ever associated 
together in the history of antiquity, so the names of 
Grote and Gibbon will ever be mentioned together in 
the literary history of England. There is a certain pro- 
priety that a country which has surpassed Rome in the 
extent of her empire, and at least equals Greece in all 
matters of philosophical and intellectual accomplish- 
ment, should have given birth to the greatest writer on 
the decline and fall of the one, and the best historian 
of the rise and progress of the other. We cannot tell 
what the future may have in store for us, but it is diffi- 
cult to beUeve the histories of Gibbon and Grote can 
ever be superseded. Discoveries may be made that 
may cast fresh light on particular points, writers may 
arise who may survey certain portions of the field from 
other and truer stand-points, isolated conclusions of the 
historians may be called in question or proved to be 
erroneous — all these things may occur, as indeed, some 
of them have occurred already, but that the histories of 
Greece and Rome, as written by Grote and Gibbon, will 
ever become obsolete it is very difficult to conceive. 
They have been ™tten with so much genius and care, 
that they will survive as literary works even when they 
are found to be faulty as histories. 

There have not been wanting those who have said 
that the writers of history are more worthy of our 



64 Masters in History. 

admiration than the makers of it, that it is Gibbon 
we admire and not Constantine, Grote and not 
Alcibiades, Motley and not William the Silent. The 
statement is too sweeping to be accepted in its 
entirety, but there can be no doubt it contains in 
it a certain element of truth. The historian is not 
a mere annalist — a bare recorder of the facts of a 
nation's life. He differs from the latter as the painter 
differs from the photographer, and for the carrying out 
of his work the historian, like the painter, requires a 
severely disciplined artistic sense. To put down in their 
order the dates of the births and deaths of princes, the 
names of the places where battles were fought, the names 
of the generals, and which side won, is the part of the 
chronicler; but it is the work of the historian to group, to 
paint, and to vivify, to trace the hidden stream of tendency 
which has brought about particular events, and to calculate 
the results which are likely to proceed or flow from them. 
It is the artistic elements which the historian embodies 
in his narrative that attract the attention of the reader 
to the genius of the former, while perusing the events of 
the latter. It is these elements, entering as they do in 
so large a measure into the substance of the " Decline 
and Fall of the Roman Empire " and the " History of 
Greece," which give these works a permanent literary 
value, apart altogether from the importance or accuracy 
of the facts they record. 

While the works of Gibbon and Grote lie side by side, 
their lives, strikingly similar in all matters concerning 
literary purpose, yet present certain distinguishing con- 
trasts. The life of Grote cannot fail to have the more 
salutary influence. Gibbon was a historian and nothing 
else : he was trained for no particular profession, he gave 
himself to no special business, his life-work was his his- 



George Grote. 65 

tory, and it formed the business and pleasure of his exist- 
ence. Although an outstanding example of special devo- 
tion to a particular task, it is a life all the same which can 
only appeal to the few, and can never be held up as a stim- 
ulus to the great majority of men who must spend the seri- 
ous hours of the day in professional or business labours, 
and have only a very narrow margin to devote to the intel- 
lectual pursuits of literature and science. Whilst the lives 
of Gibbon and Grote show what can be done by those 
whose good fortune it has not been to receive a university- 
education, it is only in the life of the latter we see to what 
splendid purpose the leisure hours of a hard working 
career may be put, what rich fruits may be gathered in 
them, and what a fabric of learning and research may be 
built up by filling them with cultured activities. It is 
impossible to come into living contact with a mind like 
Grote's without finding in it the lineaments of a charac- 
ter singularly noble. This man of whom we speak was, 
no doubt, to a large extent, Grote the successful Banker, 
in virtue of the fact that he was his father's son, but he 
was altogether Grote the Great Historian, in virtue of the 
use to which he put his hours after he had left the count- 
ing-room for the day. He may have been speaking for 
many others, but certainly for himself, when he gave 
utterance to these words in his presidential address to the 
London Scientific Institution, on the ist June 1846, in 
the London Tavern, " To those — whether they be many 
or few, I know not — who may still hold the ungenial 
prejudice that there is an inherent incompatibility be- 
tween a day of industry in the counting-house, and an 
evening of study in the lecture-room, the class-room, or 
the library — we must continue to present the best of all 
refutations, in the lives and behaviour of our members. 
To those, on the other hand, whose sentiments are more 



66 Masters in History. 

generous and exalted, who esteem an enlightened popu- 
lation a greater glory than splendid edifices and unmea- 
surable capital, and who count it an honour to London 
to interweave the threads of literature and science 
with the staple of a commercial and professional life ; to 
these minds we offer ourselves with confidence as auxi- 
liaries and instruments, prepared to justify our claim 

upon their paternal sympathy To-morrow as well 

as to-day — in the times of our descendants as in our owti 
— the life of the commercial and professional man will 
consist of a day of labour and an evening of leisure, 
which may be well or ill appropriated ; to-morrow as well 
as to-day, the sociability of his nature may be enlisted in 
favour of the better employment instead of the worse — 
in favour of mental progress and elevating recreations, 
and against both seductions and lassitude Speak- 
ing as one, the best years of whose life have been passed 
as principal of a banking house, I contend, emphatically, 
that merchants and bankers will obey the call of interest 
as well as of duty, in seconding the voluntary efforts of 
our members."* 

In George Grote, the historian of Greece, there was a 
strain of foreign blood. His grandfather, Andrew Grote, 
came over from Bremen about the middle of the eight- 
eenth century ; and, prospering in business, he eventually 
entered into partnership with one George Prescott. As 
the result of this union of business talent, the banking 
house of "Grote, Prescott, and Company" was estab- 
lished January ist, 1766. Andrew Grote still further 
added to his wealth by marrying Miss Ann Adams, a 
lady of position and fortune. The brother of this lady 
dying without issue, the estate of Badgemore and Henley- 
on-Thames passed into the Grote family. In 1757, Mrs 
* Minor Works of George Grote, pp. 188, 192, 193. 



George Grote. 67 

Grote died, and three years later, Mr Grote took to himself 
another wife, in the person of Miss Mary Ann Calverden. 
To her husband, this lady bore three sons and six 
daughters ; and George, the eldest son of this second 
marriage, was the father of the future historian of Greece. 
He was educated at the Charterhouse, apprenticed abroad, 
and most strictly trained in the arts of business by his 
father. In due time he came to occupy his father's posi- 
tion in the firm of " Grote, Prescott, & Co," and in 1793, 
he " married the daughter of Doctor Peckwell, a reverend 
divine, endowed with a handsome person, and talents 
of a somewhat superior quality." It may be mentioned 
as showing the bloods that were mixed in the historian, 
that the wife of Dr Peckwell was of French extraction ; 
the revocation of the edict of Nantes had brought her 
family to Ireland not long after the year 1685. After 
his marriage with Miss Selina Peckwell, Mr George 
Grote settled at Clay Hill, near Beckenham, in Kent, 
about ten miles from London, and there, on the 17th 
November 1794, his son George was born unto him. 

It would appear that Mrs Grote, like the minister's 
daughter to whom we have had occasion to refer so fre- 
quently in the previous paper, was a lady of superior in- 
telligence and refinement. It is quite possible Dr Peck- 
well may have bestowed as much pains on the education 
of his daughter as M. Curchod did on his ; but letting 
this be as it may, it is satisfactory to know that Mrs 
Grote was ambitious her son should excel in learning ; 
and, before he was five and a-half years of age, at which 
period it was deemed necessary to send him to school, 
the mother had taught her son to read and write, and 
actually grounded him in the elements of Latin. With 
such careful maternal preparation, it is not to be wondered 
at, that when the youngster entered the Grammar^School 



68 Masters in History. 

of Sevenoaks, he was able to rank with boys above his 
age, or that the master, the Rev. Mr Whitehead, imme- 
diately discovered in him " a decided aptitude for study." 
It is not easy to estimate a mother's influence over her 
son, but the pains which Mrs Grote took to fix on 
George's mind during his holidays what he had been 
learning during the session can hardly be over-valued. 
Habits, which masters work hard to break their pupils 
into, are often wholly dissipated by two months' com- 
plete idleness; and when teachers and scholars meet 
again, the former find they have their labours all to begin 
anew. In this household at Beckenham, however, it was 
different : what Mrs Grote's boy learned from his masters 
during the term, she was careful to confirm in the recess ; 
and so, whatever intellectual ground the boy had gained, 
was kept, and whatever information he had gathered, was 
securely stored up. 

When he was ten. Master Grote passed from the 
Grammar School to the Charterhouse. This change 
could hardly have taken place more opportunely. Dr 
Raine, an enthusiastic schoolmaster and distinguished 
scholar, was then at the head of the establishment ; and 
George Waddington, afterwards Dean of Durham; Conop 
Thirlwall, afterwards Bishop of St David's, and historian 
of Greece ; Henry Havelock, afterwards the fearless soldier, 
and others, were then boys in the classes, and the every- 
day companions of young Grote. Between discipline on 
the one hand, and clever competitors on the other, the 
education of the future historian of Greece could hardly 
have been conducted under more favourable auspices. 
Master George was too clever a boy ever to feel the rod 
for neglected lessons, or insufiiciently prepared exercises, 
but he had also in him too much of animal spirit not to 
feel it often for the venial offences peculiar to boyhood, 



George Grote. 69 

and which are more the product of an exuberant life, 
than of an evil spirit. It was in 1810, on the eve of his 
leaving school, and when, by his talents, he stood almost 
at the head of it, he received his last flogging. To com- 
memorate the close of his Charterhouse days, Grote in- 
vited a number of his class-fellows and school companions 
to supper in the " Albion Tavern," Aldersgate Street, and 
for partaking somewhat amply, and inviting others to do 
the same, he was doomed to suffer in the flesh. What the 
master said to him on the occasion does not appear ; but, 
doubtless, the good man — as teachers are wont on such 
occasions — predicted a depraved future from such a close 
to the career of a Charterhouse scholar ! 

The father and mother of George Grote formed a pe- 
culiar couple, and in many ways were singularly unsuited 
to each other. Even after a long life together, they could 
not fit in wholly to each other's habits. The elder Grote 
was a man who had a preference for country life, and an 
inborn fondness for the common rural sports of hunting 
and shooting, and being a man of wealth and position, 
and having many acquaintances, he loved from time to 
time to meet his friends around his board. Mrs Grote, 
on the other hand, was a strict Calvinist, and would asso- 
ciate with none but those who reflected her own religious 
sentiments. She disliked the society of her country 
neighbours, and frowned on all guests visiting her house 
on her husband's invitation. Such a state of matters no 
doubt led to a deal of domestic unpleasantness, but the 
elder Grote, finding her opinions were not to change, left 
her to pursue in all matters of household management 
her own course, only reserving for himself the reins in all 
matters connected with his children's education. It was 
just a pity when the husband left so much to his wife he 
did not leave this also, for there cannot be a doubt, if 



70 Masters in History. 

Mrs Grote had had her own way in the educational 
affairs of her family, she would from the Charterhouse 
Academy, have sent her eldest son at once to the 
University. With regard, however, to the advantages to 
be derived from a liberal education, the elder Grote was 
wholly indifferent ; he had no anxiety that his son should 
get on anywhere but in the commercial world — his only 
ambition being, that he might be a successful banker ; and 
so, when his son was but sixteen years of age, he was in- 
stalled, with a more imperfect education than falls to the 
lot of thousands of the English youth of to-day, in 
Threadneedle Street, to commence his banking career. 
This was in 1810. Let us read what this lad, when he 
had become a grown man, spoke six-and-thirty years 
after when he addressed University College, on the ist 
July 1846 : — " I hope, and I believe, that the adminis- 
trators of University College will succeed in diffusing 
among the public of London larger ideas on the proper 
measure of a citizen's education — in correcting that mis- 
taken impatience with which parents, often under no 
pressure of necessity, abridge those years requisite for 
their son's complete education, and hurry him into pro- 
fessional life a half-educated man."* The fact was, 
Grote never ceased to regret his early devotion to busi- 
ness and consequent premature withdrawal from every 
system of public educational discipline. 

In so far as society was concerned, the young man was 
placed under many disadvantages by the unfavourable 
condition of things existing in his own home. But as 
we shall more fully discover as we proceed, Grote had 
ever that happy pushing spirit which rose above even 
extraordinary difficulties. And so, while his mother was 
on visiting terms with but few of her neighbours, he was 
* Minor Works of George Grote, pp. 202, 203. 



George Grote. "ji 

a general favourite, and on the best footing with all. 
Considering what was required of him in Threadneedle 
Street, he still could always find an occasional afternoon 
for cricket, and he had not as yet become so sufficiently 
studious as to love his books more than the innocent 
dissipations of a country ball. In going out into society 
his mind was poetic and impressionable ; but with one 
exception, he was distinctly fortunate in his special 
friendships, and he had already that in him which made 
it wholly impossible for him to draw to any companion 
devoid of intellectual tastes. By and by this temperament 
got so absolutely confirmed, that intellectual worth, and 
that alone, was the only quality which he would allow to 
command his respect, or which he would acknowledge as 
deserving of the respect of others. The later develop- 
ments of this spirit were certainly owing to the influence 
of James Mill. This eminent man, and historian of 
India, young Grote first met at the house of David 
Ricardo, whither he was wont to repair as often as he 
could, that he might Hsten to his conversation on a 
science that was already occupying much of his thought, 
namely, the science of PoHtical Economy. In a letter 
which he ^\Tote at this time to George W. Norman, one 
of Grote's most trusted and accompHshed young friends, 
we find the following words : — " I have met Mill often at 
Ricardo's house, and hope to derive great pleasure and 
instruction from his acquaintance, as he is a very pro- 
found thinking man, and seems well disposed to com- 
municate, as well as clear and intelligible in his manner. 
His mind has, indeed, all that cynicism and asperity 
which belong to the Benthamian School, and what I 
chiefly dislike in him is, the readiness and seeming pre- 
ference with which he dwells on t\iQ faults and defects of 
others, even of the greatest men ! But it is so very rarely 



72 Masters in History. 

thai a man of any depth comes across my path, that I 
shall most assuredly cultivate his acquaintance a good 
deal farther. My friends in Calf a7id Russia still continue 
faithful and interesting, and if it were not for them, life 
would be a very waste indeed." This passage is of the 
greatest interest, as it shows the mind of Grote operating 
freely, and before it got completely entangled in Mill's 
intellectual coils. Above all others, James Mill was the 
kind of man to whose opinions Grote, by the natural 
constitution of his mind, was predisposed to defer, and 
the result brought about could have been anticipated 
from the beginning of their acquaintance. The philo- 
sopher was an eager propagandist, and in the course of 
a remarkably short space of time he had his young 
disciple at his feet. It would no doubt have been better 
for Grote, it would most certainly have left him with a 
sweeter tone of mind, if he had been more discriminating 
in his admiration of his master. While he received many 
good lessons, he also imbibed many unreasonable pre- 
judices. No mind ever kept so faithfully the direction 
it received from the impulse of another than did the 
mind of Grote the direction given it by the mind of Mill. 
The metaphysician gave him a love for philosophy, and 
that love was never quenched ; he made him a student, 
and a student he remained. His RadicaHsm and 
democratic sympathies Grote also took from the teaching 
of his early master. It would have been well could the 
future Historian of Greece have stopped short at this 
part of his master's educating process; but Mill's 
fanaticism against the governing classes simply because 
they were the governing classes, his rancorous hatred of 
the aristocracy, his " profound prejudice " against the 
Established Church and her ministers, all had their 
reflection more or less in the sentiments of the pupil. 



George Grote. 73 

To the credit of Grote this must be said, however, that 
while the good influences of Mill remained, the antipathies 
died out, and eventually the sweeter mind prevailed. 
Along with Ricardo and Mill, Grote was also at this time 
associating with Bentham, but what permanent impression 
this able man left on the mind of his young friend does 
not appear. Bentham was peculiar in his conversation : 
he would bear with no interruption ; so, although he 
talked fluently, it is just possible one so enquiring as 
Grote would feel his meetings with him, pleasant though 
they were in their way, yet somewhat unsatisfactory in 
their results. 

The unfortunate acquaintanceship * already alluded to 
was with a clergyman of the Church. Mrs Grote in her 
" Personal Life " of her husband, a work written with admir- 
able delicacy, condensation, and grace, but here and 
there disfigured by touches of asperity, has not told us 
either who he was, or to what congregation it was his 
privilege to minister, and it is well she has kept her own 
counsel, giving the world no further clue to the man than 

it can have in the sufficiently hazy symboHsm of E . 

To this man, the Rev. Mr E , Grote had been 

attracted by the suavity of his manners, the extent and 
variety of his reading, and the fact that he was acknow- 
ledged as a scholar and a masterly critic. In [the com- 
pany of this reverend individual Grote was wont to talk 
freely and openly, and while he still believed him to be a 
gentleman, he submitted to him in confidence the secrets 
of his heart. It is every way to be regretted this con- 
fidence was so completely misplaced, as it would have 
been of incalculable advantage to the young man to have 
discussed over again with a clergyman of cultured 
intelligence the philosophical positions of Mill ; and there 
* " Personal Life/' p. 15, et seq. 



74 Masters in History. 

can be no doubt in the society of such an one this further 
advantage would have accrued — the unreasoning an- 
tipathies of the teacher would have been immediately 
corrected, and possibly wholly neutralized before they 
had fixed themselves in the temperament of the future 
Historian. 

Grote's break with the Rev. Mr E flowed from his 

dishonourable conduct in a love affair of the young man. 
In the winter of 1 8 14-15, Grote became acquainted 
with Miss Harriet Lewin, on the introduction of his friend 
G. M. Norman, and towards this young lady he soon 
cherished the tenderest of sentiments. Now, as it would 
happen, the young man, in the first place, confided his 

passion to his friend E , and by this individual he 

was told the pursuit was hopeless, as it consisted with his 
knowledge her hand was already promised to another. 
In his innocence, George Grote suspected no duplicity ; 
he gave up the hopes of happiness he had been cherish- 
ing, and tried to forget his pain by increased devotion to 
business and study. His father observed his son's 
changed deportment, and interrogating him on the mat- 
ter, he was told all that had occurred. The parent was 
in no way sorry at the result, and, to guard against all 
future difficulties, he extorted from his son the promise 
that he would never marry until he had obtained his 
father's sanction in the matter. Soon after this promise 

had been given, the treachery of E 's conduct was 

disclosed. The fact was, he himself had been an importu- 
nate suitor for Miss Lewin's hand. " E is a villain ; 

and Harriet completely exculpated " was the glad news 
sent by G. W. Norman to his friend Grote in the autumn 
of 1 8 13. So far all was well, but wakening to a know- 
ledge of E 's trickery, he woke also to the conscious- 
ness of his rash and hasty promise to his father. Grote 



George Grote. 75 

appealed to his father to release him, considering the cir- 
cumstances in which the promise had been made ; but 
the heart of the old banker was in no way touched by the 
passion of the youth. The young man's last difficulty 
was like to be worse than his first, for, as he v/as entirely 
dependent on his father, there remained no alternative 
for him but to bow to his stern decree, and reHnquish all 
intercourse with the Lewin family. 

In his second perplexity Grote again returned, and 
with increased eagerness, for consolation to his books. 
He made a special study of Sismondi's " Italian History." 
Like Gibbon, he took copious notes as he went on, and 
never considered himself master of any subject until he 
had put down on paper the thoughts that had occurred 
to him about it. He confessed to his friend Norman, " I 
have always found that, in order to make myself master 
of a subject, the best mode was to sit down and give an 
account of it myself." So " literature continued to form 
the greatest attraction to his mind," and was, he acknow- 
ledged, " the only pleasure he could enjoy which left no 
repentance behind it," until the March of 18 18, when all 
his former passion was awakened by finding himself un- 
expectedly in the presence of its object. The effect 
produced was unmistakeable, as his own words suffici- 
ently testify. "I had the happiness or misfortune (I 
know not which to call it, the feelings are so mixed) to 
see my dear and favourite, Hamet Lewin, the other day 
in Bromley. She was sitting with Charlotte and another 
lady in the carriage, which was waiting at the door of the 
' Bell.' I stood there and conversed with her for about 
ten minutes, but something — I know not what it is — kept 
me, during the whole of the time, in such a state of inde- 
scribable tremor and uneasiness, that I could hardly utter 
a rational sentence. She looked lovely beyond expres- 



76 Masters in History. 

sion. Her features still retained the same life and soul 
which once did so magnetize me ; I never have seen it, 
and I never shall see it, on any other face. My dear 
Harriet ! It is terrible work. It is most cruelly painful 
to think that I can only appear to her in the light of one 
who has occasioned nothing but pain and uneasiness to 
her. Yet so it must be. I am sometimes tempted to 
wish myself an isolated being, without any family or rela- 
tions, and nothing but those friends whom my own merit 
(little as it is) may attach to me, and to whom my affec- 
tions flow spontaneously and ardently. Relations are a 
chain which drags a man on by means of his sense of 
duty. Happy is he who has fewest." After this first 
meeting, and, no doubt, also after many others, for Miss 
Lewin was now staying with Lord Harewood, at his resi- 
dence in Hanover Square, the son petitioned the father 
with increased emphasis, and eventually the old banker 
agreed to his son's proposals, on condition that the nup- 
tials should not take place for two years. The new 
arrangement was judged of in the worst spirit by the 
Lewin family ; it was distasteful, in the highest degree, that 
they were obliged to accept the young man's suit with so 
distant a prospect of union. Miss Lewin also said, " it 
was not without mortification and embarrassing reflections 
she made up her mind to forget the painful circumstances 
of 1 815, and to submit to enter into this harsh com- 
pact." All things considered, it was natural the lady 
should have had some feeHng in the matter; on the whole, 
however, the young man seems to have been contented 
with the final turn of events. He opened up his mind 
to his old Charterhouse friend, Waddington, on the sub- 
ject of his future marriage, and, in return, he had a cha- 
racteristic letter with certain caustic touches : " I saw a 
monster yesterday— an English monster — [the letter is 



George Gi^ote. "jj 

written from Paris] — that weighs about 20 stone, and yet, 
perhaps is still as much like a man as any other animal; 

I mean in appearance. It calls itself E . Going to 

dine at the table d'hote with my cousin, I observed this 
phenomenon waiting to be fed." 

The two years preceding Grote's marriage were divided 
between bank work and study. He kept a regular diary, 
and by it Miss Lewin was kept perfectly posted up in the 
events of his daily life. His diary would have its special 
interest for Miss Lewin, but it has also now its general 
interest for the educated world. Here are tAvo entries — 
one of a Sunday, and another of a week day — taken at 
random. January, 1819. Tuesday — " Rose at \ past 8. 
Breakfasted and unlocked. Read some more of ' Say's 
preface.' Thought much this day on the subject of 
Foreign Trade. Dined at J past 5 ; played on the bass 
for an hour, and then read some of Lessing's theological 
writings. Drank tea, and spent the evening in writing 
down my thoughts on Foreign Trade. Bed at 12." Stm- 
day, March 28 — " Rose at h past 5. Studied Kant until 
J past 8, when I set off to breakfast with Mr Ricardo. 
Met Mr Mill there, and enjoyed some most interesting 
and instructive discourse with them, indoors and out 
walking in Kensington Gardens, until J past three, when 
I mounted my horse, and set off to Beckenham. Was 
extremely exhausted with fatigue and hunger when I 
arrived there, and ate and drank plentifully, which 
quenched my intellectual vigour for the night. Bed at 
J past 10." 

Early in the month of March 1820, at Bexley Church, 
Kent, George Grote and Miss Harriet Lewin were mar- 
ried by the Rev. Edward Barnard, the vicar. Before 
this consummation was brought about they had endured 
much for each other's sake, but that endurance was fully 



78 Masters in History. 

rewarded by the lifetime of happiness they had with 
each other. Mrs Grote was a woman of rich native 
talents, and by her contributions to the Westminster Re- 
view^ she helped to increase the household income dur- 
ing her first married years. Such exertions on her part 
should not have been at all necessary if her husband 
had been paid according to the duties he performed, 
and his position as working partner in the Bank. The 
narrow establishment they were obliged to keep — merely 
a dingy unhealthy house at the Bank, and furnished 
lodgings in the suburbs — was owing to the parsimony of 
the elder Grote. When they began life with each other 
the pair had a heart for any fate, and, considering the 
affluent circumstances in which they afterwards moved, 
it was possibly for the advantage of both that they were 
called on for two or three years to practise a rigid fru- 
gality. Miss Harriet Lewin was in every way fitted to 
be the wife of such a man as George Grote. She knew 
what such a man needed was sympathy and companion- 
ship in his higher work ; and before her marriage she 
had so disciplined her mind by study in view of the life 
before her, that when she became Mrs Grote there was 
no need for her husband to decline to the narrower 
heart and the range of lower feelings. What Grote 
might have done with a less accomplished wife we can- 
not tell, but this we know, it was Mrs Grote kept his 
literary impulse ever active, and his intellectual passions 
ever warm ; she entered into the spirit of his every en- 
deavour, and she suggested his greatest work. It was 
from the well-springs of his domestic life he drew strength 
for his every achievement, and to them he ever went for 
solace and refreshment. 

The married pair had not gone far together in the 
path of life when they were met by severe domestic 



George Grote. 79 

affliction. The unhealthy nature of their house in 
Threadneedle Street acted very injuriously on Mrs 
Grote's health. Her reduced constitution brought about 
premature labour, and a boy was born, who only sur- 
vived a week. Puerperal fever followed on the birth, 
and after three days the doctors said there could only be 
one termination to the illness. They were very happily, 
however, disappointed ; their patient rallied, and, after a 
slow convalescence, recovered. 

While Grote's days were spent in his office, his even- 
ings were now almost exclusively devoted to study, and 
more than ever did he court the acquaintanceship of intel- 
lectual men. Mr David Ricardo, Mr John Smith, M.P., 
Mr John Black of the Morning Chronicle, Thomas 
Campbell the poet, John and Charles Austin, John 
Romilly, Charles Buller, Lord WiUiam Bentinck, Eyton 
Tooke, John Stuart Mill, John R. Macculloch, and M. 
de Santa Rosa, were all frequent visitors at Threadneedle 
Street between the years 1822 and 1830. Mrs Grote 
had many connections amongst the aristocracy, whom it 
would have been her pleasure to visit and entertain, but 
such a decided aversion had her husband to " everything 
tinctured with aristocratic tastes and forms of opinion," 
that she was obliged, for the sake of domestic quietness, 
and that she might not directly displease " her somewhat 
intolerant" husband, to relinquish to a very large extent 
her aristocratic friendships. He would not suffer that 
Mrs Grote should be dictated to by the very highest offi- 
cers in the State. Witness the following to his wife, then 
staying at the noble residence of Gilston Park, Herts : — 
" I trust you will not be kept longer than Thursday or 
Friday : and I really think that neither you nor Mrs 
Lewin ought to suffer your time and your expectations to 
be tampered with any longer, eimi by the Governor- 



8o Masters i7i History. 

General of India. If he does not come on Monday or 
Tuesday, I would not wait for him at all." 

Getting up early, for the most part about six, reading 
all manner of learned works in the morning and in the 
evening, Grote accumulated vast quantities of notes on 
the volumes perused. One day Mrs Grote said to her 
husband, " You are always studying the ancient 
authors whenever you have a moment's leisure; now 
here would be a fine subject for you to treat. Suppose 
you try your hand I" Mrs Grote's reference was to a 
subject frequently under discussion, namely, the history 
of Greece. Grote accepted the suggestion of his wife. 
The idea of a great new History of Greece fixed itself 
in his mind, and from that time — the autumn of 1823 — 
his studies became directed towards the accomplishment 
of his vast self-imposed task. The historian himself 
gives no clue to the first idea of his work, he merely 
says in one place,^ " The first idea of this history was 
conceived many years ago, at a time when ancient Hellas 
was known to the English public chiefly through the 
pages of Mitford." 

It is not to be thought for a moment that while Grote 
was thus earnestly devoting himself to study, he was even 
in the smallest way neglecting his business. . The fact 
was he did not find private study and public duty in any 
way incompatible, and whilst he was enlarging his repu- 
tation amongst men of letters, he was at the same time 
establishing himself amongst mercantile men as a wise 
and considerate banker. So far from the interests of the 
house " Prescott, Grote, & Co." suffering in his hands, 
after the concern had been for some time under almost 
his sole management, it was found, on his father's death 

* " History of Greece," vol. i., Preface, p. 5. 



George Grate. 8i 

in 1830, that he had very materially enlarged the busi- 
ness. 

By the decease of the elder Grote, his son inherited 
the family estate in Lincolnshire and ^^40,000 of per- 
sonal property. This event put him on a perfectly dif- 
ferent social footing. So far — his views on many things 
differing so substantially from his father's — his life had 
been subject to considerable restraint ; now he was in 
a position to do what seemed to him good in his own 
eyes. As yet he had taken no personal part in the 
politics of his time : and the only matter in which he 
had interested himself, acting along with Macaulay, Mill, 
Waymouth, Hume, and Hallam, had been the founding 
of the London University. Now, however, his demo- 
cratic sympathies were keenly affected by the aspect of 
affairs in the country. The people were agitated, and 
the Reform Bill was being debated in Parliament. At 
the request of Mill he gave some weeks to the thinking 
out of the whole question then before the country, and in 
a very short space he issued from the press a fibrous and 
closely reasoned essay on the Essentials of Parlimtientary 
Refo7"m. The subject suited the temper of the author's 
mind, and finding his ground firm beneath him he struck 
out fiercely. He even allowed his antipathies play — but 
this is not the strong point of his paper — and declaimed 
against the aristocracy in language not the most mea- 
sured. In these sentences there is something both of the 
thought and sarcasm of the complete paper : — " Supe- 
rior income afi'ords no ground for guessing at the capa- 
cities of men, even as a general rule. In comparing 
men of middling incomes, from ;£"ioo per annum up- 
wards, there is no presumption of superior capacity on 
either side ; but when we reach the very high figure in 
the scale, it will be found that not only is there no pre- 

F 



(2) 



82 Masters in History. 

sumption in favour of mental eminence, but there is a 
probability not easy to be rebutted against it. The po- 
sition and circumstances of a very rich man cut off all 
motive to mental labour : he is caressed and deified by 
his circle without any of those toils whereby others pur- 
chase an attentive hearing ; and the purple, the fine 
linen, and the sumptuous fare every day of Dives are 
impediments to solid improvement hardly less fatal than 
the sores and wretchedness of Lazarus."* 

It was evident to all that a man who could write such 
a paper as the Essentials of Parlimnentary jReform, was 
a man to be looked up to by his party. After its publi- 
cation great endeavours were made to get him to contest 
the City of London, but at first he positively refused. 
Apart from the little work above referred to, he had not 
as yet won fame as an author, and beyond his business 
connections and a small circle, there were comparatively 
few acquainted in any way with the sterling worth of the 
man. Mrs Grote was right when she held that for her 
husband to enter on a successful parliamentary contest, 
and to be heard with respect and attention in the House, 
it was necessary he should first have made himself a 
name. It was only after the publication of the history, 
and " when it had reflected a literary renown upon its 
author, he could hope to derive an importance in the 
public eye adequate to sustain him in a political course." 

The views of Mrs Grote were just and sensible ; but 
the stream of influence steadily increasing in volume, 
eventually its force was not to be resisted, and in 1832, 
after the Reform Bill had been passed in its final shape, 
he issued his address to the electors of the City of 
London. This carefully drawn up document went on to 
say that he regarded the Reform Bill as but the first step 
* ''Minor Works, "pp. 18, 19. 



George Grote. 8 



o 



" towards a series of great and essential ameliorations," 
and he would not consider it had even got a fair trial 
until two improvements indispensable to the efficacy of 
the Representative System had been completed. These 
improvements were Vote by Ballot and Triennial 
Elections. To the constituency of the City, Grote 
simply and plainly declared himself a Radical, and that 
the electors were neither afraid of the man nor the name 
they showed by their votes, for the name of " George 
Grote " was at the head of the poll with a majority of 
924 votes, the total number given in his favour being 
8788. Mrs Grote confessed " it was a proud day to her 
when she looked down on 4000 citizens in Guildhall, 
cheering and echoing the sentiments which for years we 
had privately cherished, but which were now first fearlessly 
avowed." 

During these exciting times the history had been "pro- 
gressing favourably ; but for a period it was now laid on 
the shelf, — currency, the Bank Charter, and cognate 
subjects engaging the new M.P.'s attention. At a dinner 
party in Threadneedle Street, at which ^^ were present 
Henry Warburton, John Romilly, Joseph Hume, and 
James Mill, it was agreed that Grote should be the person 
who should undertake to bring the Ballot before the 
House in the ensuing parliamentary session. The en- 
trusting of Grote with this duty virtually constituted him 
leader of the Radical party. Although his brother 
Charles had been now settled in his old house at the 
bank, thus easing him considerably in affairs of business, 
still, from the position he occupied, it was difficult to get 
spare time for extraordinary labours. However, as best 
he could, he surmounted all difficulties, and on the 25th 
April 1833, he made his first motion in favour of the 
Ballot, concluding it with these words : " That this 



84 Masters in History. 

House might be so constituted, that it should enjoy and 
command and deserve the confidence of the people." 
Grote occupied the time of the House for an hour, and 
although he had not yet studied the graces of elocution 
and the arts of distinct speaking, still he was perfectly 
heard by the whole assembly. He had a difficult 
question to deal with, and he succeeded in putting the 
issues before the House with absolute clearness. The 
speech contains many forcible passages, and in such 
pieces as these we find unmistakeable traces of his severe 
classical culture, and the pith and directness of the 
Socratic dialogue : — " How much influence over votes 
ought a rich man to have ? As much as he can purchase? 
No, certainly ; for even the present law forbids all idea 
of his purchasing any influence. Not as much as he can 
purchase, but as much as he deserves, and as much as 
unconstrained freemen are willing to pay him. Amongst 
unconstrained freemen, the man of recognised superiority 
will be sure to acquire spontaneous esteem and deference : 
these are his just deserts, and they come to him un- 
bidden and unbespoken. But they will come to him 
multiplied tenfold, if along with such intrinsic excellencies, 
he possesses the extrinsic recommendation of birth and 
fortune ; if he be recommended to the attention of his 
neighbours by the conspicuous blazon of established 
opulence and station, and if he be thus furnished with 
the means of giving ample range and effect to an 
enlightened beneficence. This is the meed which awaits 
men of birth and station, if they do but employ their 
faculties industriously and to the proper ends. Poorer 
men may, doubtless, attain it also ; but with them the 
ascent is toilsome, the obstructions numerous, and the 
success at best uncertain : to the rich man the path is 
certain and easy — the willing public meet him half way, 



George Grote, 85 

and joyfully hail the gradual opening of his virtues. He 
is the man to whom they delight to pay homage, and 
their idolatrous fancy forestalls and exaggerates his real 
merits. This, sir, is, in my opinion, the legitimate 
influence of wealth and station : to serve as the passport, 
the ally, and the handmaid of superior worth and talent. 
This influence is as gentle and kindly as it is lasting and 
infallible ; it is self-created and self-preserving ; and it is, 
moreover, twice blest, for it blesses as well the few who 
exercise it, as the many over whom it is exercised." The 
M.P. for the City closed with the following appeal : — " If 
ever there was a case in which the address to your reason 
was vehemently and powerfully seconded by the appeal 
to your feelings, that case is the emancipation of honest 
voters — the making peace between a man's duty and his 
worldly cares — the rescue of political morality from the 
snares which now beset it, and from the storms which 
now lay it prostrate. You are called upon to protect the 
rights and to defend the integrity of the electoral con- 
science j to shield the innocent from persecution at the 
hands of the guilty ; to guard the commonwealth against 
innumerable breaches of trust committed by the reluctant 
hands of well-meaning citizens. . . . Above all, you 
are called on to make this House what it professes and 
purports to be, a real emanation from the pure and free- 
spoken choice of the electors j an assembly of men com- 
manding the general esteem and confidence of the 
people, and consisting of persons — the fittest which the 
nation affords — for executing the true end and aim of 
government. When all these vast interests, collective 
and individual, are at stake in one measure, am I not 
justified in demanding from you, not merely a cold and 
passive attention, but an earnest sympathy and solici- 
tude?"* The motion of Grote was supported by Dr 
* •' Hansard's Parliamentary Speeches." 



S6 Masters in History. 

Lushington, Cobbett, and O'Connell; but the result of 
the voting was — ayes, io6 ; noes, 211; pairs, 26. Again 
and again Grote returned to the attack, but each time 
only to sustain defeat. During his parliamentary career, 
six times in all did he bring forward his motion. On the 
3rd June 1835, he only secured 146 in his favour, whilst 
319 votes were recorded against him. In the following 
year the tone of parliamentary feeling was unchanged, 88 
was the number of the ayes, and 139 the number of the 
noes. On the 8th March 1837, the division stood — for, 
155 ; against, 267 ; pairs, 5. The last time Grote made 
the motion was on the i8th June 1839. He said he had 
no novel arguments to bring forward, and hoped even 
although "they intended the Reform Act to be final, 
they did not mean also to embalm its deformities." The 
mover was ably supported by the brilliancy of Macaulay, 
but when the count came, only 216 members declared 
" aye," while 333 declared " no." 

During Grote's Parliamentary career from 1833 to 
1 84 1, there had been two dissolutions; and when he 
sought, on the last of these occasions, re-election for the 
city, he stood at the bottom of the four returned, and 
only escaped defeat by six votes. For Grote, this very 
narrow majority was in reality a defeat ; but it was not 
so much the man as the decay of the party, which 
brought about a result at the election, which the 
historian could not but feel. In the Parliament of 
1836, there were only half-a-dozen members " to sustain 
the Radical opinions of the House of Commons." One 
evening in Grote's house, when all the other guests had 
departed, and Sir William Molesworth and Charles 
Buller remained late to talk about the state of affairs, the 
latter said to his host, " I see what we are coming to, 
Grote ; in no very long time from this, you and I shall 
be left to ' tell ' Molesworth ! " 



George Grote. Sy 

The ballot was, no doubt, the measure with which 
Grote's name as a Member of Parliament was chiefly 
identified, but it was certainly very far from engaging his 
whole attention ; he made important speeches on other 
matters and did a great amount of parliamentary work. 
Between the preparation of speeches, attendance at the 
House, and the engrossing nature of private and the ex- 
citement of public business, his years of parliamentary 
life were wholly barren of literary products strictly so 
called. His friend, Molesworth, at the suggestion of 
Mrs Grote, pubhshed an edition of the works of 
Hobbes ; and his old schoolmate, Waddington — now 
Dean of Durham — also gave to the world a " History 
of the Reformation," both of which works, at great 
trouble to himself, Grote revised. But this was all. It 
may be said he found both tasks uncongenial — the latter 
especially so. 

Although Grote was a man of an exceedingly powerful 
constitution, he found House-of-Commons life extremely 
fagging. No evil results, however, accrued to his 
health, for so soon as his tone was perceptibly lowered, 
Mrs Grote had him immediately away from the foetid 
atmosphere of London and its assemblies. In this way 
the historian had most agreeable trips to Paris, Belgium, 
Switzerland, the Rhine, and the South of England ; and 
thus his public life was pleasantly diversified by private 
recreation. 

That the life of a Member of Parliament, ever full of 
wrangle and noise, but ever barren of practical result, 
could long have continued satisfactory to such a man as 
George Grote, it is wholly impossible to believe. It was 
certainly good for liim he had entered Parliament, for in 
discussing the constitution of the Grecian States it fur- 
nished him with personal experiences of a popular assem- 



88 Masters in History. 

bly, but all the same, he soon grew weary of it, or, per- 
haps, more properly speaking, he bethought himself of 
the long evenings he had had to himself before he 
entered Parliament, his long spells of improving study, 
and the chapters of his " History of Greece " that were 
lying on the shelf. At anyrate, in the February of 1838, 
we find him writing thus to his friend, Mr John Austin, 
then Senior Commissioner of Inquiry at Malta : — " The 
degeneracy of the Liberal party, and their passive acquies- 
cence in everything, good or bad, which emanates from 
the present Ministry, puts the accomplishment of any 
political good out of the question, and it is not at all 
worth while to undergo the fatigue of a nightly attend- 
ance in Parliament for the simple purpose of sustaining 
Whig Conservatism against Tory Conservatism. I now 
look wistfully back to my unfinished Greek History. I 
hope the time will soon arrive when I can resume it." 

After the dissolution in 1841, Grote and his wife 
carried out a long-thought-of idea of visiting Rome. 
The first time the historian of Greece caught sight of the 
Eternal City, he could hardly restrain his emotion \ but 
plain fact often treads rudely on the skirts of sentiment, 
and the future historian was called away from musing 
amid the ruins of antiquity to pay the April Bank divi- 
dends in Threadneedle Street ! 

Immediately he was back in England, his old pre-parlia- 
mentary habits came back upon him. His leisure was 
again filled with profitable study. At his house at Burn- 
ham Beeches, he laid out in detail the scheme of his first 
two volumes of his " History of Greece," and in the 
Westminster Review for May 1843, ^^ g^ve the learned 
world a foretaste of their contents in an elaborate article 
on Early Grecian Legends. 

In the autumn of 1843, ^^er having been thirty years 



George Grote. 89 

connected with the banking-house, Grote retired from 
the firm of Prescott, Grote, & Co. The clerks in the 
estabhshment paid him a valued compliment on the 
occasion ; but apart from the death of Mrs Grote's 
father, his meeting with the reverend wit, Sydney Smith, 
at his residence Combe Florey, in Somersetshire, with 
the French philosopher M. Comte in Paris, and with that 
great musical genius, Felix Mendelssohn in London, this 
year and the one following passed quietly and unevent- 
fully. 

Before going on to speak of the publication of the His- 
tory, it will be well to pause for a little and consider the 
preparation the historian had made for his work. 

It is to be noted, in the first place, that the languages 
of which he was master were Greek, Latin, French, 
Italian, German, and, of course, Enghsh. By means of 
these instruments he had made himself acquainted with 
the manners and customs, the habits and institutions of 
a great number of countries, making himself specially 
conversant with the facts and circumstances attending the 
rise of their national life. Every fact connected with the 
growth of a people's power was interesting to him, and 
having secured, in his young days, an extensive vocabu- 
lary by the perusal of all kinds of imaginative liteiature, 
it was ever a pleasure to him to write down his opinions 
of books, men, and historical events. When he sat down 
in earnest to his work, he had thus beside him common- 
place books, filled with learned references, and a great 
accumulation of short sketches and essays on matters 
particularly bearing on Grecian history. 

The turn of mind which he received from James Mill 
is not to be lost sight of. If the chief defects of Mitford's 
history flowed from the monarchical tendencies of the 
writer, it was the democratic habit of thought planted in 



QO Master's in Histoiy. 

his pupil by the philosopher which brought Grote into 
sympathetic connection with the Hellenic race, and gave 
him that principle of living interpretation which even 
more than his scholarship and assiduity was to unlock the 
hidden secrets of Grecian life. The knowledge and re- 
search Grote brought to bear on the whole range of his 
work, no doubt surpassed that of any other Grecian his- 
torian, but, in reality, it was the spirit he brought to bear 
on the cold facts which gave his pages fresh interest, and 
his conclusions their inestimable value. Mr Murray's 
confidential adviser, after perusing the MSS. of Grote's 
first two volumes, and without knowing who the author 
was, said to the publisher, " Sir, you have got hold of a 
good thing here, and one likely to produce a great effect 
upon the scholar world. If I am not mistaken, this will 
prove to be a work of profound interest to us all." And 
Mill pronounced on the general effect in these words : — 
" Though the statement has the air of an exaggeration, yet, 
after much study of Mr Grote's book, we do not hesitate 
to assert, that there is hardly a fact of importance in 
Grecian history which was perfectly understood before his 
re-examination of it." 

Furthermore, when account is taken of the large place 
in Grecian history filled by necessary accounts of works 
of philosophy and art, it is at once evident that some- 
thing more must be possessed by the historian of Hellas 
than merely '' a historical or narrative interest." The 
phenomena of Grecian culture required its historian to 
be at the same time a psychologist and philosopher. 
Excepting in Hume and Mill, these qualities have seldom 
been found in the same individual. Grote, however, is 
another exception, and in him the analytic habit of the 
philosopher was happily blended with the discriminating 
power of the historian \ and it was in virtue of possessing 



George Grote. 91 

these faculties he was as able to follow the footsteps of 
Alexander as to thread the mazes of the Platonic philo- 
sophy. Thus, in most comfortable worldly circumstances, 
freed from business entanglements, with languages learned, 
with studious habits confirmed, with stores of past indus- 
try to draw from, with a large knowledge of the world, 
and with a mind ready to mark and sympathise with every 
popular effort after freedom, Grote, in the seclusion of 
Burnham Beeches, sat down to his great self-imposed 
task. 

The scope of the historian's work was " to exhaust the 
free Hfe of collective Hellas," to put down in their order 
all the events that marked, and the activities that quick- 
ened, the Grecian race from the time of the Homeric 
poems to the death of Alexander. The work was to be 
divided into two great parts — Legendary and Historical 
Greece. The latter part again, the historian proposed to 
subdivide into six great divisions. From 776 B.C. to the 
accession of Peisistratus at Athens was to constitute the 
first period of Historical Greece ; from Peisistratus to the 
repulse of Xerxes, the second; from the repulse of 
Xerxes to the overthrow of Athens, the third ; from the 
close of the Peloponnesian war to the battle of Leuktra, 
the fourth ; from the battle of Leuktra to that of Chae- 
roneia, the fifth ; and from the battle of Chaeroneia to 
the end of the generation of Alexander, the sixth. 

By the beginning of 1846 the first two volumes were 
ready for the press. After some difficulty, Mr Murray, 
of Albemarle Street, was secured by Mr Grote, as publisher. 
Strange to say, Grote would take nothing to do with the 
pubHshing arrangements. He only ventured to hope 
" that the poor man might not be a loser by him, and then 
he would be content, come what might." The truth was, 
Grote was in doubt, considering the legendary and gene- 



92 Masters in History. 

rally uninteresting nature of their contents, about the suc- 
cess of these two first volumes. He was conscious he 
had spent a deal of labour on them, but he had misgiv- 
ings with regard to their reception by the public. He 
wrote to J. S. Mill, " It is repugnant to me, rather, to 
publish the legendary matter, together with so small a 
portion of the real history as I shall be able to comprise 
in this first batch ; but a beginning must be made." 

In the March of the year 1846, the first instalment of 
the " History of Greece " was given to the world. This 
was twenty-two years after the idea of such a work had 
been suggested to Grote by his wife. The fears of the 
author were quickly dissipated by the success of the work. 
Lewis was the first to congratulate him, and thought he 
"had completely succeeded in placing the whole question of 
the mythology and legendary narrations of the Greeks 
upon what he believed to be their true footing." Not long 
after the publication, Henry Hallam, at a dinner at Sir T. 
Frankland Lewis's, drew aside the historian's wife, and 
said to her, " I have been familiar with the literary world 
for a very long period, and I can safely affirm that I never 
knew a book take so 7'apid a flight to the highest summits 
of fame as George's new ' History of Greece.' It has pro- 
duced a striking sensation among scholars." 

The chief charge which Grote anticipated would be 
made against him with regard to the subject-matter of 
Vols. I. and II., that he had not inquired sufficiently into 
that kernel of fact in which the legends had their begin- 
ning, he most ably repelled even before it had been pre- 
ferred. " I describe," says the historian, " the earlier 
times by themselves, as conceived by the faith and feel- 
ing of the first Greeks, and known only through their 
legends — without presuming to measure how much or how 
little of historical matter these legends may contain. If 



George Grote. 93 

the reader blame me for not assisting him in determining 
this — if he ask me why I do not withdraw the curtain and 
disclose the picture — I reply in the words of the painter 
Zeuxis, when the same question was addressed to him on 
exhibiting his masterpiece of imitative art — ' The curtain 
is the picture.' ^Vhat we now read as poetry and legend 
was once accredited history, and the only genuine history 
which the first Greeks could conceive or relish of their 
past time : the curtain conceals nothing behind, and can- 
not, by any ingenuity, be withdrawn." * 

During the next two years Grote and his wife had a 
great deal of intercourse with the stars of the musical 
world. Felix Mendelssohn had come to town to bring 
out his oratorio of " Elijah." Jenny Lind stayed with 
them at Burnham Beeches, and they became her warm 
friends and active partisans. They also came a great 
deal into contact with Moscheles, Ernst, Thalberg, and 
others. With such lively and interesting company about 
him, the historian still proceeded steadily with his work, 
and in the April of 1847 two other volumes made their 
appearance. The latter of these concludes with the battle 
of Marathon, " the narrative of which," said one, " cannot 
be read for the hundredth time without deep emotion." 

In the description of this battle the characteristic 
features of Grote's style are apparent. It was as diffe- 
rent from Gibbon's as could be well conceived. In 
Grote the balance of Gibbon's polished paragraphs, and 
the roll of his long sentences are wanting. Grote's sen- 
tences ever flow simply and sweetly. You realize while 
you read the author is not declaiming but speaking to 
you. The more massive figures of speech — hyperbole, 
interrogation, climax — are all wanting, but the simpler 
figures — metaphor and simile — he uses frequently and 
'^' " History of Greece," vol. i., Preface, pp. 12-13. 



94 Masters in History. 

to good purpose. He is sometimes blamed for lack of 
warmth, but if his narrative is anywhere cold it was not 
that he wanted the poetic spirit, but because he knew 
that in historical work poetry could never pass for proof, 
nor emotion for matter of fact. Not the least remark- 
able of the many good qualities of his style is that it is 
never clouded, but always simple and perspicuous, and 
the sense to be conveyed always apparent to the very 
lowest capacity. We have said the description of the 
battle of Marathon may be taken as a specimen of 
Grote's simple and lucid style : — " Of the two opposing 
armies at Marathon, we are told that the Athenians were 
10,000 hoplites, either including, or besides, the 1000 
who came from Platsea. Nor is this statement in itself 
improbable, though it does not come from Herodotus, 
who is our only really valuable authority on the case, 
and who mentions no numerical total. Indeed, the 
number named seems smaller than we should have ex- 
pected, considering that no less than 4000 Kleruchs or 
out-settled citizens had just come over from Euboea. 
A sufficient force of citizens must, of course, have been 
left behind to defend the city. The numbers of the 
Persians we cannot be said to know at all ; nor is there 
anything certain except that they were greatly superior to 
the Greeks. We hear from Herodotus that their arma- 
ment originally consisted of 600 ships of war, but we are 
not told how many transports there were ; and more- 
over, re-infor cements had been procured as they came 
across the ^gean from the islands successfully con- 
quered. The aggregate crews on board of all their 
ships must have been between 150,000 and 200,000 
men ; but what proportion of these were fighting men, 
or how many actually did fight at Marathon we have no 
means of determining. There was a certain proportion 

( 



George Grote. 95 

of cavalry, and some transports expressly prepared for 
the conveyance of horses. Moreover, Herodotus tells 
us that Hippias selected the plain of Marathon for a 
landing-place, because it was the most convenient spot 
in Attica for cavalry movements — though it is singular 
that in the battle the cavalry are not mentioned. 

'' Marathon, situated near to a bay on the eastern coast 
of Attica, and in a direction E.N.E. from Athens, is 
divided by the high ridge of Mount Pentelikus from the 
city, with which it communicated by two roads — one to 
the north, another to the south of that mountain. Of 
these two roads, the northern, at once the shortest and 
most difficult, is twenty-two miles in length \ the south- 
ern — longer, but more easy, and the only one practicable 
for chariots— -is twenty-six miles in length, or about six 
and a half hours of computed march. It passed be- 
tween Mount Pentelikus and Hymettus, through the 
ancient denies of Gargettus and Pallene, and was the 
road by which Peisistratus and Hippias, when they 
landed at Marathon forty-seven years before, had marched 
to Athens. The bay of Marathon, sheltered by a pro- 
jecting cape from the northward, affords both deep 
water and a shore convenient for landing, while its plain 
(says a careful modern observer*) extends in a perfect 
level along this fine bay, and is in length about six miles, 
in breadth never less than about one mile and a half. 
Two marches bound the extremity of the plain; the J^ 
southern is not very large, and is always dry at the con- 
clusion of the great heats; but the northern, which 
generally covers considerably more than a square mile, 
offers several parts which are at all seasons impassable. 
Both, however, leave a broad, firm, sandy beach between 
them and the sea. The uninterrupted flatness of the 
"•' Findlay on the Battle of Marathon. 



g6 Masters in History. 

plain is hardly relieved by a single tree, and an amphi- 
theatre of rocky hills and rugged mountains separate it 
from the rest of Attica, over the lower ridges of which 
some steep and difficult paths communicate with the 
districts of the interior. 

" The position occupied by Miltiades before the battle, 
identified as it was to all subsequent Athenians by the 
sacred grove of Herakles, near Marathon, was probably 
on some portion of the high ground above this plain, 
and Cornelius Nepos tells us that he protected it from 
the attacks of the Persian cavalry by felled trees ob- 
structing the approach. The Persians occupied a posi- 
tion on the plain ; while their fleet was arranged along 
the beach, and Hippias himself marshalled them for the 
battle. The native Persians and Sakae, the best troops 
in the whole army, were placed in the centre, which they 
considered as the post of honour, and which was occu- 
pied by the Persian king himself when present at battle. 
The right wing was so regarded by the Greeks, and the 
polemarch Kallmiachus had the command of itj the 
hoplites being arranged in the order of their respective 
tribes from right to left. At the extreme left stood the 
Platseans. It was necessary for Miltiades to present a 
front equal, or nearly equal, to that of the more nume- 
rous Persian host, in order to guard himself from being 
taken in flank : and with this view he drew up the cen- 
tral tribes, including the Leontis and Antiochis, in shal- 
low files, occupying large breadth of ground : while each 
of the wings was in stronger and deeper order, so as to 
make his attack efficient on both sides. His whole army 
consisted of hoplites, with some slaves as unarmed or 
light-armed attendants, but without either bowmen or 
cavalry. Nor could the Persians have been very strong 
in this latter force, seeing that their horses had to be 



George Grote. 97 

transported across the ^gean. But the elevated position 
of Miltiades enabled them to take some measure of the 
numbers under his command ; and the entire absence 
of cavalry among their enemies could not but confirm 
the confidence with which a long career of uninterrupted 
victory had impressed their generals. 

" At length the sacrifices in the Greek camp were 
favourable for battle, and Miltiades, who had everything 
to gain by coming immediately to close quarters, ordered 
his army to advance at a running step over the interval 
of one mile which separated the two armies. This rapid 
forward movement, accompanied by the war-cry or paean 
which always animated the charge of the Greek soldier, 
astounded the Persian army ; who construed it as an act 
of desperate courage little short of insanity, in a body not 
only small, but destitute of cavalry or archers — but who, 
at the same time, felt their conscious superiority sink 
within them. It seems to have been long remembered 
among the Greeks as the peculiar characteristic of the 
battle of Marathon, and Herodotus tells us that the 
Athenians were the first Greeks who ever charged at a 
run. It doubtless operated beneficially in rendering the 
Persian cavalry and archers comparatively innocuous, 
but we may reasonably suppose it also disordered the 
Athenian ranks, so that when they reached the Persian 
front, they were both out of breath and unsteady in that 
line of presented spears and shields which constituted 
their force. On the two wings, where the files were deep, 
this disorder produced no mischievous effect ; the Per- 
sians, after a certain resistance, were overborne and 
driven back. But in the centre, where the files were 
shallow, and where, moreover, the native Persians and 
other choice troops of the army were posted, the breath- 
less and disordered Athenian hoplites found themselves 
(2) G 



98 Masters in History. 

in far greater difficulties. The tribes Leontis and Anti- 
oches, with Thomastikles and Aristides among them, 
were actually defeated, broken, driven back, and pursued 
by the Persians and Sakae. Miltiades seems to have fore- 
seen the possibility of such a check when he found him- 
self compelled to diminish so materially the depth of his 
centre ; for his wings having routed the enemies opposed 
to them, were stayed from pursuit until the centre was 
extricated, and the Persians and Sakae put to flight along 
with the rest. The pursuit then became general, and the 
Persians were chased to their ships, ranged in line along 
the shore ; some of them became involved in the impas- 
sable march and there perished. The Athenians tried 
to set the ships on fire, but the defence here was both 
vigorous and successful — several of the forward warriors 
of Athens were slain, and only seven ships out of the 
numerous fleet destroyed. This part of the battle ter- 
minated to the advantage of the Persians. They repulsed 
the Athenians from the sea-shore, and secured a safe re- 
embarkation; leaving few or no prisoners, but a rich 
spoil of tents and equipments which had been disem- 
barked and could not be carried away. 

" Herodotus estimates the number of those who fell on 
the Persian side in this memorable action at 6400 men ; 
the number of Athenian dead is accurately known since 
all were collected for the last solemn obsequies— they 
were 192. How many were wounded we do not hear. 
The brave Kallimachus, the polemarch, and Stezilaus, 
one of the ten generals, were among the slain ; together 
with Kynegeirus, son of Euphorion, who, in laying hold 
of the poop-staif of one of the vessels, had his hand cut 
off by an axe, and died of the wound. He was brother 
to the poet ^schylus, himself present at the fight ; to 
whose imagination this battle at the ships must have em- 



George Grote. g^ 

phatically recalled the fifteenth book of the Iliad 
Both these Athenian generals are said to have perished 
m the assault of the ships, apparently the hottest part of 
the conflict. The statement of the Persian loss as given 
by Herodotus appears moderate and reasonable, but he 
does not specify any distinguished individuals as having 
fallen." * ^ 

The battle of Marathon being one of the outstanding 
events m Grecian History, and its proudest scene of 
heroism and victorious valour, it has been again and 
agam objected to Grote's account that it does not suffi- 
ciently excite the imagination. But it is worthy of 
remark, that those who have had the deepest knowledge 
of military affairs have never had for the historian's de- 
scription anything but unqualified praise. One-and- 
twenty years after the publication of the fourth volume 
one of the few survivors of Waterloo, Sir William Gomm' 
confessed that he burned with a desire to view the site of 
Marathon with Grote's book in his hand. On Mrs Grote 
saying, « It has been objected by the critics that the 
story of Marathon was too coldly narrated in Grote-" 
the veteran replied, " Not at all ! It is excellently told 
and I have read it over, often, with delight." 

To resume. After the publication of the third and 
fourth volumes, Grote became eagerly interested in the 
condition of affairs in Switzerland. The poHtics of the 
country were strangely agitated, and Grote believing that 
the condition of the Cantons formed a good practical 
illustration of the autonomy— a word, by the way first 
brought into repute by the historian— of the ancient 
Grecian States, at once took ship for the Continent, that 
he might make a personal inspection of this peculiar 
form of government. He made his inspection with that 
ll!o?S^°'^ of Greece," vol. iv., pp. 467-476, ut sz.pra. 



lOO Masters in History. 

thoroughness and masterHness which characterised his 
every work, and eventually he published a little book on 
the subject. In the beginning of the volume he states 
how the purpose of his visit had been entirely that he 
might be enabled to carry those enlightened views to the 
elucidation of the poHtics of Greece. 

" The inhabitants of the twenty-two Cantons of Swit- 
zerland are interesting on every ground to the general 
intelligent public of Europe. But to one whose studies 
lie in the contemplation and interpretation of historical 
phenomena, they are especially instructive — partly from 
the many specialities and differences of race, language, 
religion, civilization, wealth, habits, &c., which distin- 
guish one part of the population from another, compris- 
ing between the Rhine and the Alps, a miniature of all 
Europe, and exhibiting the fifteenth century in juxtaposi- 
tion with the nineteenth — partly from the free and unre- 
pressed action of the people, which brings out such 
distinctive attributes in full relief and contrast. To 
myself in particular, they present an additional ground of 
interest from a certain political analogy (nowhere else to 
be found in Europe) with those who prominently occupy 
my thoughts, and on whose history I am still engaged — 
the ancient Greeks." * 

In Switzerland, Grote spent a day with Mendelssohn 
at his home at Interlachen. This was only some weeks 
before the death of the great musician. Next winter, 
when Grote and his wife were entertaining during the 
opera season, Jenny Lind, Chopin, Thalberg, and Dorus 
Gras at the " Beeches," it seemed, without Felix Men- 
delssohn's vivacious company, most unlike the happy 
party they had formed there in past days. The sudden 

* « ' Preface to Letters on Switzerland. " 



George Grote. loi 

death of the Jewish composer was a great blow to the 
musical world, but by few in the country excepting that 
solitary couple at Burnham Beeches, was it felt as a per- 
sonal bereavement. 

Diversified though they were by occasional company, 
still those quiet years that the historian passed at his subur- 
ban residence were filled to the full by studious labours, 
and they saw his scholarly passion ever deepening and in- 
tensifying. The historian was full of his subject ; he felt he 
was able for it — that he was master of it ; and thence- 
forward to nearly the close of his life, he frequently 
complained, not in any spirit of exasperation, but mildly 
and blandly, that ''the days were too short." Gibbon's 
regret was when he looked back on his Oxford years, 
that he had not done more in the past ; Grote's, on the 
other hand, was, that he could not make enough of the 
present — that the golden hours passed too swiftly by, and 
all too quickly after the dawn came the close of the work- 
ing day. How frugal he was of his time, the extent of his 
works bears sufficient testimony. In the autumn of 1 848, 
appeared the fifth and sixth volumes, only to be followed 
in the March of 1850 by the seventh and eighth. 

It has always been common with the writers of books 
to show their manuscripts to trusted friends before 
putting them into the hands of the printer ; but while 
Grote often performed the part of reader for others, 
he never required for himself any other adviser than his 
wife. Excepting part of the sixth volume, the whole of 
the manuscript and proof came under her eye, and many 
were the corrections, emendations and excisions which 
at her instance were made on the work. There cannot 
be the least doubt that such extraordinary capacity on 
the part of his wife, if it was not at the root, must at least 
have very distinctly stimulated those active efforts he put 



I02 Masters in History. 

forth, while member of the Council of University College, 
for the higher education of women. 

During the winter of the last mentioned year, Grote, 
with his wife, attended, on the invitation of the Queen, 
the theatrical "Soirees" of Her Majesty at Windsor. This 
was not the first time, for ever since the publication of 
the " Swiss Letters," which greatly pleased Prince Albert, 
the ex-M.P. for the city had not been lost sight of at 
Court. Mrs Grote confessed she did not know whether 
to feel " flattered or insulted " at the frequent inquiries 
which these invitations called forth from certain quarters. 
She felt the honour in her heart, but still she was a 
woman after all — a woman and a wife ; and what honour 
could be too much for George. It would appear, not- 
withstanding the Windsor theatricals, Grote was still as 
much a Radical as ever, and not yet had any change 
passed over his political sentiments. One night in 
Drury Lane, when Grote and his wife were in a pit box, 
Monckton Milnes came and talked with Mrs Grote. 
" You see," said Mr Milnes, " that man in the stalls 
opposite, that is the envoy from the French Republic." 
The wife passed the information along with an opera 
glass to her husband. " Bless me," said the historian, 
using the binocular, " I must go and call on that gentle- 
man immediately." Next morning Grote was at the 
door of the " Ambassador of the Republic," and two 
days after the Ambassador was dining with him in his 
town establishment, now in Saville Row. In 1849, when 
the historian paid a short visit to his friends in Paris, he 
was "unwontedly excited" at the idea that he was then 
actually living under a Republic. 

On the 15th of March 1850, the name of Grote, along 
with the names of Lords Monteagle and Overstone, Sir 
James Graham, Thomas B. Macaulay, Sir George Corne- 



George Grote. 103 

wall Lewis, and Henry Hallam, were added by the 
Crown to the Senate of University College, and in this 
institution he took the very warmest interest to the end. 
During the twenty-one years Grote was a member of the 
Senate, many critical questions came to be discussed and 
voted on, and the historian was invariably found on the 
side of progress and liberality. It said much for Grote's 
inherent breadth of spirit that, while all his years had 
been taken up with erudite and classical studies, still he 
was willing to believe that other studies than those in 
which he had found a special charm might be equally 
useful and salutary. To the claims of science he was 
never indifferent. In two measures he took a particular 
mterest ; the one was the claim of the graduates to be 
admitted into the corporate body, and the other was the 
admission of women to the examinations of the univer- 
sity. The agitation concerning the first measure was 
successful, and that concerning the second was only de- 
feated by the narrowest of majorities ; indeed, just by the 
casting vote of the Chancellor. The speech made by 
Grote, when this vote was taken in the Senate, was one 
of the most temperate, exhaustive, and genuinely hberal 
he ever uttered. In one part of it he said : " The convic- 
tion has spread much, and is spreading more, among 
both sexes, that women must be taught much more than 
they have been, to earn for themselves and by their own 
efforts, an honourable and independent living. There is 
a larger proportion of women now than formerly who are 
dissatisfied with a life of mere dependence, without any 
active purposes or prospects. To throw open to them 
the field of professional competition more largely than 
is now done, appears to me most desirable as well 
as most equitable ; but it is an essential preliminary to 
success in any line that habits of steady, accurate appli- 



I04 Masters in History. 

cation should be formed at an early period of life. 
Wherever a female has that genuine aspiration to attain 
an independent and self-maintaining position, which in 
my judgment is a virtue ahke in both sexes, the prospect 
of access to our examinations and certificates will. tend to 
stimulate the diligent and serious application in early 
life which is now wanting, because it goes untested and 
unrewarded. Complaints of the general inaccuracy of 
women's minds are sufficiently frequent to have reached 
everyone. Let those women who are superior to this 
very frequent infirmity, and who are prepared to prove 
themselves superior, have the opportunity of doing so by 
admission to our examinations." 

The ninth and tenth volumes of the " History of 
Greece" were brought out in the month of February 
1852, and the eleventh about the end of April of the 
following year, but what substantial reward, besides fame 
and honour, the work was bringing to the historian we 
are, for the most part, left to guess. Grote did not write 
for money ; no historian can. To George C. Lewis our 
author once remarked in a letter, " No man can write a 
long work on history or philosophy who has not means 
of support independent of what the work is to produce." 
Grote's hope at first had been, " that the poor man, the 
publisher, might lose nothing by him." But as the work 
was extensively read, as it appeared, and as the first 
volumes were already in their third edition, there is no 
doubt the history must have been by this time a source 
of very considerable profit. What the extent of the 
profit was we are not told, but Mrs Grote informs us that 
the residence they built for themselves at East Burnham 
was named " History Hut," from the fact that it was 
wholly built and furnished from the proceeds of the sale 
of the history. 



Geoi^ge Grote. 105 

Although Grote certainly had not " cultivated litera- 
ture on a little oatmeal," still, from the force of circum- 
stances above set forth, he had never been able to call 
himself a university man. That he thus had to educate 
himself in the higher branches of literature, and that this 
work in no way could be considered as the product of 
college training, may have been the reasons why he was 
so long in being recognised by the authorities of the 
national universities. But, at any rate, from whatever 
cause, it was not until the historian was verging on sixty 
years of age he received academical distinction. In the 
middle of 1853, Henry Milman, then Dean of St Paul's, 
communicated with Grote on the matter of the honorary 
degree of D.C.L. Milman acted on behalf of his univer- 
sity, and his offer of the degree was in terms the most 
flattering. " My own feeling of reverence," said the 
Dean, " and love for the university induces me to wish 
most earnestly, that by proposing some higher names, 
more worthy of the honour, more worthy of being joined 
with Macaulay, Oxford may redeem herself from the 
somewhat inglorious Hst, which, in fact, according to old 
usage, she receives from the Chancellor at his installa- 
tion." In due course, Grote was invested with the de- 
gree of doctor of civil law. He received his distinction 
at the hands of the late Earl of Derby, and he confessed 
to being somewhat nervous in finding himself for the 
first time surrounded by the scholarship of Oxford. At 
a banquet given in honour of the new Chancellor, Grote 
replied for the "British Historians," and Sir Roderick 
Murchison said, that " he made by far the best speech of 
the evening." 

The pursuits of literature are very far removed from 
those of banking, and those of agriculture stand far 
apart from both. Now, it might be thought that any 



io6 Masters in History. 

man who had it in him to excel in the higher walks of 
scholarship and trade could hardly fail in the lower walk 
of farming. Experience, however, has shown again and 
again that the very greatest men may make the most un- 
successful agriculturists. Amongst the very considerable 
number of names great in literature, but beaten and 
disappointed in farming, must be placed the name of 
Grote. About this time he got entangled with a 600 acre 
farm of his own in Lincolnshire, but after entering into 
it with the utmost spirit, and spending a deal of money 
on implements, cattle, and draining, and after also, it 
must be said, reading the best works on the subject, he 
was obliged eventually to let it to another, as finding in 
it a source of continued irritation, vexation, and loss. 
When we know the historian had got his ideas of farm- 
ing from Virgil's " Bucolics," we can hardly wonder he 
suffered defeat and disappointment when himself put his 
hand to the plough. 

On the 23d December the last sheets of the " History 
of Greece" were sent from History Hut to the publishers. 
Thus, thirty-two years after the first idea of the work had 
been suggested to him by his wife, and twelve years after 
he had left the firm of ''Prescott, Grote, & Co.," from 
which time he had given himself almost exclusively to 
its preparation, George Grote had the satisfaction, amid 
the applause of educated England and Germany, to 
bring, what was acknowledged by all as one of the 
greatest literary and historical efforts of his time, to a 
triumphant conclusion. Gibbon, as we have seen, after 
finishing his great work on the " Decline and Fall of the 
Roman Empire," left his writing-table to muse for a 
little, in the soft stillness of the evening, and while the 
silver orb of the moon was showing its shimmering re- 
flection in the Genevese lake, on the uncertainty of all 



George Grote. 107 

human life, and the possible brevity of his own. The 
conclusion of the " History of Greece" calls us to view 
a homelier scene altogether, and the historian in a less 
romantic situation. Mrs Grote tells us it was Christmas 
Eve, and, along with one or two of her husband's bro- 
ther's children — for they had none of their own — they 
were all very happy together. While the children played 
by themselves, Mrs Grote brewed a bowl of punch, in 
celebration of the completion of the ^''opus magmun;'' and 
she further discloses, that as the Doctor continued to 
sip " the delicious mixture," for the most part in silence, 
but " giving unmistakeable signs of inward compla- 
cency," she grew garrulous in her wifely happiness, 
bringing to mind the scenes of thirty years ago, and 
sooner, when they had met in their golden prime, when 
she had first spoken of the history ; and descanting upon 
^' the happiness of their living to see this day," and the 
termination of the work. As we have said, this is a 
homelier scene than a similar one we depicted in our 
previous sketch, but on that account it hath not the less 
a broader human appeal. 

As the historian had advanced, he had warmed to his 
work, and his zeal and thoroughness had so increased 
with his progress, that the twelfth volume may be taken 
as containing the best part of the whole history. In this 
volume the outstanding feature is the startling and mar- 
vellous career of Alexander the Great. On the whole 
life of this great warrior the historian had bestowed the 
utmost pains ; but he had so mastered the subject that 
we never see in any part of this narrative, what we fre- 
quently behold in other departments of the history, the 
writer bent down with such a weight of authorities that 
his step wants elasticity and his advance seems painful 
and' slow. In the story of Alexander we find the greatest 



io8 Masters in History. 

possible amount of research united to the greatest sup- 
pleness of style and rapidity of narrative. The last 
hours of the son of Philip of Macedon are thus de- 
scribed : — " On the morrow, though desperately ill, he 
still made the effort requisite for performing the sacrifice : 
he was then carried across from the garden-house to the 
palace, giving orders that the generals and officers should 
remain in permanent attendance in and near the hall. 
He caused some of them to be called to his bedside ; 
but though he knew them perfectly, he had by this time 
become incapable of utterance. One of his last words 
spoken is said to have been, on being asked to whom he 
bequeathed his kingdom, ' To the strongest : ' one of his 
last acts was to take his signet ring and hand it to Per- 
dikkas. For two nights and a day he continued in this 
state, without either amendment or repose. Meanwhile, 
the news of his malady had spread through the army, 
filling them with grief and consternation. Many of the 
soldiers, eager to see him once more, forced their way 
into the palace, and were admitted unarmed. They 
passed along by the bedside, with all the demonstrations 
of affliction and sympathy, Alexander knew them, and 
made show of friendly recognition as well as he could, 
but was unable to say a word. Several of the generals 
slept in the Temple of Serapis, hoping to be informed by 
the god in a dream whether they ought to bring Alexan- 
der into it, as a suppliant, to experience the divine heal- 
ing power. The god informed them in their dream that 
Alexander ought not to be brought into the temple — 
that it would be better for him to be left where he was. 
In the afternoon he expired — June 323 B.C. — after a life 
of thirty-two years and eight months, and a reign of 

twelve years and eight months Alexander had 

mastered, in defiance of fatigue, hardship, and combat, 
not merely all the eastern half of the Persian empire, 



George Grote. 109 

but unknown Indian regions beyond its eastermost limits. 
Besides Macedonia, Greece, and Thrace, he possessed 
all that immense treasure and military force which had 
once rendered the great king so formidable. By no such 
contemporary man had any such power ever been known 
or conceived. With the turn of imagination then preva- 
lent, many were doubtless disposed to take him for a 
god on earth, as Grecian spectators had once supposed 
with regard to Xerxes, when they beheld the innumer- 
able Persian host crossing the Hellespont. Exalted to 
this prodigious grandeur, Alexander was at the time of 
his death little more than thirty-two years old — the age 
at which a citizen of Athens was growing into important 
commands \ ten years less than the age for a consul at 
Rome \ two years younger than the age at which Timour 
first acquired the crown, and began his foreign conquests. 
His extraordinary bodily powers were unabated ; he had 
acquired a large stock of military experience ; and, what 
was still more important, his appetite for further con- 
quest was as voracious, and his readiness to purchase it 
at the largest cost of toil or danger as complete, as it 
had been when he had first crossed the Hellespont. 
Great as his past career had been, his future achieve- 
ments, with such increased means and experience, were 
likely to be yet greater. His ambition would have been 
satisfied with nothing less than the conquest of the whole 
habitable world as then known; and if his life had 
been prolonged he would probably have accompHshed it. 
Nowhere (so far as our knowledge reaches) did there re- 
side any military power capable of making head against 
him j nor were his soldiers, when he commanded them, 
daunted or baffled by any extremity of cold, heat, or 
fatigue." 

* "History of Greece," vol. xii., pp. 344, 345, 348, 349. 



no Masters m History. 

Carlyle somewhere says that the writing . of his books 
has invariably made him ill : and when we consider the 
number of years Grote had spent on his history — the 
steady devotion and intellectual energy with which he 
prosecuted his task — we cannot wonder after it was done 
he seemed so thoroughly jaded that Mrs Grote was glad 
to get him away to the Italian lakes to recruit. Before, 
however, the History had been well out of his hands, and 
before setting out for his well-earned tour, he had put 
his papers together in prospect of attacking the Philo- 
sophy of Plato. Ever as he grew older the idea of the 
short days and the long work made him ever more eager 
to seize the opportunity of the passing hour. 

The next two or three years after his return from Italy 
were passed at History Hut in study and comparative 
retirement. Left to himself, Grote would never have 
become member of any club, but by the exertions of 
Lord Overstone, and the connivance of his wife, his 
resistance was overcome, and he was enrolled a member 
of " The Club," as it is called, par excellence. It was the 
club of which Johnson, Reynolds, Goldsmith, and 
Gibbon had all been members in their day. Grote never 
regretted the step, but used to recount the conversation 
of the rooms, and was often highly delighted with the 
superior literary talk of the members. Amongst the 
visitors who enlivened the historian's leisure were Mrs 
Stanley, Lady Trelawny, Lady Lewis, Dr William Smith, 
John Mill, Mr Lowe, and Professor Bain. Grote also 
met by accident while on a visit to the country the Hon. 
Lothrop Motley, the famous historian of the Low 
Countries. There is no account of what passed between 
the two men, but from the nature of their sentiments, we 
may well suppose they would find in each other the 
most congenial companionship. Motley was travelling 



George Grote. 1 1 1 

with his wife and daughter in England, and after this 
casual meeting they all paid a short visit to Grote at 
Barrow Green, whither he had removed after disposing 
of History Hut. 

On the 9th of January his old friend Henry Hallam 
died, and was interred in Westminster Abbey. Hallam 
had been a trustee of the British Museum, and it had 
been one of his last wishes that Grote might be appointed 
in his place after he was gone. This wish was realised 
in the appointment of Grote to the vacant seat; but 
although he had already sufficient " Board " work, the 
duties of a Museum Trustee were at once interesting and 
peculiar, and after the brain was fatigued by philosophical 
writing, he always found it a pleasing diversity to par- 
ticipate in labours requiring practical discernment. 

In the beginning of January 1862, John Stuart Mill 
was anxious Grote should accompany him in a tour to 
Greece. Finding himself, however, now too old for the 
foot and horse exercise inevitable in such a journey, 
Grote was obliged to decline visiting in person those 
scenes of which he had written so much, and which since 
his earliest years had ever shone before his imagination. 
A consciousness of growing years and failing strength 
made Grote now more cautious in his exercises and 
methodical in his studies than he had ever been. He 
now rose regularly at 8 a.m., and after a short walk and 
light breakfast, he repaired to his study, where he re- 
mained till dinner, with only a short cessation from work 
at luncheon time. From breakfast till luncheon he was 
invariably accompanied by " Dora," a little favourite pet- 
dog. "Dora" took up her position on the historian's 
knees, and Mrs Grote " will vouch for it that the greater 
portion of the volumes of his Plato were written over the 
back of this little favourite." After luncheon, having 



112 Masters iii History. 

spent the morning with " the Master," " Dora " devoted 
the remainder of the day to attending on the " Mistress." 

In 1863 Grote paid a visit to Canon Stanley, Professor 
of Ecclesiastical History at Oxford, and met with a most 
flattering reception from young England. In the year 
following he had the high honour to be elected " Foreign 
Member " of the Institute of France, " The muster roll of 
which," said the Count Adolphe de Circourt, in giving 
him notice of his election, " is probably the highest and 
fullest representation of the genius and learning of the 
age." 

Vast as was the conception of the " History of 
Greece," it was in reality but part of a grander design in 
the mind of the historian. His object was to write a 
great Greek Trilogy : the first part being the History of 
Greece, the second was to be an elucidation of the 
Philosophy of Plato and his contemporaries, and the 
third a discussion of the life, influences, and ethics of 
Aristotle. In May 1865, nine years after the completion 
of the History, appeared the second part of this great 
work, under the title of " Plato and the other Com- 
panions of Sokrates." The subject was one which com- 
mended itself specially to the historian's intelligence, as 
he regarded the writings of Plato as the pure and 
unadulterated products of the Hellenic mind. ^They 
had a rich value of their own, because they were unmixed 
by foreign speculations, and " preceded the development 
of Alexandria and the amalgamation of Oriental views of 
thought with the inspirations of the Academy or the 
Lyceum." " The Orontes and the Jordan had not yet 
begun to flow westward, and to impart their own colour 
to the waters of Attica and Latium."* 

*" Plato and the other Companions of Sokrates," vol. i. 
Preface, p. 12. 



Geo7^ge Grote. 113 

The year following the publication of the " Plato " was 
embittered by a severe sectarian struggle. The Pro- 
fessorship of Logic in University College had become 
vacant, and as the Dissenters had ever looked with 
interest to the rise of this institution, they were most 
anxious to have their party represented amongst its Pro- 
fessors. For this purpose they brought forward the Rev. 
James Martineau as a candidate for the vacant chair. 
Grote was dismayed for the moment. But not losing 
courage, his wife says, like " Christian " when he found 
Apollyon bestraddling the pathway, Grote " immediately 
felt for his sword." The fight was acrimonious and en- 
venomed; but Grote succeeded in swaying the vote 
against the Unitarian. This matter we need scarcely 
have alluded to ; it is only worthy of mention from the 
fact that defeat would have severed Grote's forty years 
connection with an institution whose prosperity was in 
great measure owing to his own disinterested endeavours. 

Grote began his work on Aristotle in his seventy-first 
year, so anxious was he to complete his account, if he 
were able, not only of the active, but also of the specula- 
tive history of Hellas. Apart from writing some contri- 
butions to Professor Bain's " Manual," including the 
De Anima, which occupied eight months in composition, 
the Aristotle engaged the whole of his studious hours. 
This work, however, was never to see the light in Grote's 
lifetime ; indeed, although the author had advanced it 
far, still he did not live to complete it. It is but a frag- 
ment — a sad memorial of the defeat which awaits the 
most courageous human endeavours. While Grote thus 
strove to exhaust the Hfe of collective Hellas, it is strange 
we have nowhere any hint that the artistic powers of the 
Greek intelligence were as worthy of examination, and 
just as great as either their active or speculative capa- 

H 



114 Masters in History. 

bilities. With his books on the works of Plato and 
Aristotle before us, we cannot help thinking of possible 
books as full and elaborate on the works of Phidias and 
Praxiteles. 

In a letter to Professor Bain, dated 4th December 
1868, we find Grote saying — " I am sure my intellect is 
as good as ever it was. I shall be 74, Nov. 17." While 
the historian was writing in this manner to his friend, Mrs 
Grote was writing to the following effect in her diary : — 
" Mr Grote's health, I fully expect, will ere long give way 
under the unwholesome habits in which he permits him- 
self to indulge ; spending about twenty-two hours out of 
the twenty-four — indeed sometimes twenty-three — within 
four walls. ... Mr Grote's personal aspect is sen- 
sibly changed within the last eight months, whilst I dis- 
cern a lessening capacity for bodily exertion, not fairly 
referable to his being one year older. His hand shakes 
worse than it did, his gait has altered to that of an old man, 
from being remarkably steady and elastic up to a recent 
date." During the hot June of 1869 he stuck to his 
" Board " work in town, and his studious labours at his 
desk, but his wife getting him to consult a physician, he 
was ordered off at once to Hombourg-les-Bains, to drink 
the waters for three weeks, and thereafter to travel in 
Switzerland. 

Honours, as we have seen, had been falling thick on 
him lately, but shortly after his return from the Continent 
he had the greatest of all placed before him for his accept- 
ance. With the authority of Her Majesty, Mr Gladstone 
proposed to him that he should become a peer of the 
United Kingdom. In a long letter to the Prime Mini- 
ster, Grote set forth his reasons for refusing the generous 
offer, and one paragraph of it was characteristic : — " Last, 
though not least, I am engaged in a work on Aristotle, 



George Grote. 1 1 5 

forming a sequel to my work on Plato : and, as I am 
thoroughly resolved to complete this, if health and energy 
be preserved to me, I feel that (being now nearly seventy- 
five) I have no surplus force for other purposes." This 
reflects the man : he could never think of position apart 
from corresponding duties to be discharged, and from no 
duty, however onerous, would he ever turn to grasp at any 
position, however honourable. 

Since the time Grote had first given utterance to his 
views on the ballot, now nearly forty years ago, his opin- 
ions had been slowly ripening in the country ; but when, 
in the month of February 1870, a member of Parliament 
moved for " leave to bring in a bill for ballot at elec- 
tions," and Lord Hartington gave no sign of any in- 
tention on the part of the Government of the day to 
oppose the bill, the near prospect of the passing of this 
measure which the historian had struggled so earn- 
estly for in his younger years, created in him no concern 
whatever. The fact was he had already anticipated the 
results that were to accrue from its action, clearly per- 
ceiving it was not likely to bring more radical members 
to the House than the open voting system. When the 
ballot act was about to be carried into effect, Mrs Grote 
said to the historian one day, " You will soon have lived 
to see your own favourite measure triumph over all ob- 
stacles, and you will, of course, feel great satisfaction 
thereat?^' The husband made answer, "I should have 
done so had it not been for the recent alteration of the 
suffrage. Since the wide expansion of the voting element, 
I confess that the value of the ballot has sunk in my esti- 
mation \ I do not, in fact, think that the elections will be 
affected by it, one way or another, as far as party interests 
are concerned." The wife made the further inquiry, 
" Still you will, at all events, get at the genuine preference 



1 1 6 Masters in History. 

of the constituency in choosing their candidate?" " No 
doubt," answered Grote, " but then, again, I have come 
to perceive that the choice between one man and another, 
among the EngHsh people, signifies less than I formerly- 
used to think it did. Take a section of society, cut it 
from top to bottom, and examine the composition of the 
successive layers. They are much alike throughout the 
scale. The opinions all based upon the same social 
instincts : never upon a clear or enlightened perception 
oi general interests. Every particular class pursuing its 
own, the result is a universal struggle for the advantages 
accruing from party supremacy. The English mind is 
much of one pattern take whatever class you will. The 
same favourite prejudices, amiable and otherwise; the 
same antipathies, coupled with ill-regulated, though bene- 
volent efforts to eradicate human evils, are well nigh uni- 
versal: modified, naturally, by instruction among the 
highly educated few ; but they hardly affect the course of 
out-of-doors sentiment. I believe, therefore, that the 
actual composition of Parliament represents, with tolerable 
fidelity, the British people. And it will never be better 
than it is, for a House of Commons cannot afford to be 
above its own constituencies, in intelligence, knowledge, 
or patriotism." Again, such a remark as the historian 
made to Mrs Grote, when talking to her about the affairs 
of the United States, gives too great insight into his later 
opinions to be passed without notice. "I have out- 
lived," said Grote, " my faith in the efficacy of republican 
government regarded as a check upon the vulgar passions 
of the majority in a nation, and I recognize the fact that 
supreme power lodged in their hands may be exercised 
quite as mischievously as by a despotic ruler like the first 
Napoleon. The conduct of the Northern States, in the 
late conflict with the Southern States, has led me to the 



George Groie. 117 

conclusion, though it costs me much to avow it, even to 
myself." It is not to be thought, from these remarks, 
that Grote's early democratic opinions had suffered eclipse j 
in reality, it was not so j his spirit never ceased to the last 
to cherish a lofty ideal of popular freedom ; but, in ma- 
ture years, he had had too much experience, meditated too 
profoundly on the drawbacks and impulses to civiHzation, 
and had become, in short, too much of a philosopher to 
believe that a perfect government could be organized out 
of the defective and broken materials of human life. To 
the end, if he had had to choose between monarchy and 
republicanism, he would have preferred the latter, but out 
of no spirit of enmity to the former. 

In the spring of 1870, the Members of Convocation of 
the University of London, asked Grote, their now re- 
spected Vice-Chancellor, to sit for his portrait — the 
picture, when finished, to be- placed in the senate-room 
of their new buildings in Burlington Gardens. The his- 
torian complied, but it was while " sitting " in Mr Millais's 
studio he received a chill, from which he never perfectly 
recovered. He had taken off his great-coat on coming 
into the painter's workshop, and although he felt uncom- 
fortable, being ever more zealous about the comfort of 
others than himself, he thought it might have been an 
injustice to the artist if he had asked to be allowed to 
put it on again. The illness which supervened would 
certainly have been triumphed over but for the historian's 
continued disobedience to medical orders. Dividend 
warrants had to be signed at the Bank of England, and 
he had to be there to sign them ; the British Museum 
Standing Committee had important work before it, and 
he had to be there to give his vote and see to everything 
being satisfactorily done. On the i6th May, the Uni- 
versity Senate held a committee meeting in his house in 



1 i 8 Masters in History. 

Savile Row. The Vice-Ghancellor presided. The matters 
on hand " taxed his cerebral faculties severely." This 
was the last effort Grote ever made for the public good, 
— the last meeting he ever attended. On the morn- 
ing of the 1 8th June, the great historian passed away 
tranquilly and without pain ; and thus was brought to 
a close, a career singularly devoted, conscientious, and 
laborious, a life rich in virtue and honour and the 
esteem of the wise and the good. The remains were 
buried in Westminster Abbey. "I selected," says 
Dean Stanley, " the spot in the south transept, in what 
Fuller calls the learned side of Poet's Corner. Camden 
and Causaubon look down upon the grave, and Macaulay 
lies a few feet distant." 

The eulogy which Grote pronounced over the life of 
Solon,* is a eulogy which with equal justice can be pro- 
nounced over his own : " He represents the best ten- 
dencies of his age, combined with much that is person- 
ally excellent j the improved ethical sensibility ; the thirst 
for enlarged knowledge and observation, not less potent 
in old age than in youth ; the conception of regularised 
popular institutions, departing sensibly from the type and 
spirit of the governments around him, and calculated to 
found a new character in the Athenian [in Grote's case 
English] people ; a genuine and reflecting sympathy with 
the mass of the poor, anxious not merely to rescue them 
from the oppression of the rich, but to create in them habits 
of self-relying industry : lastly, during his temporary pos- 
session of a power altogether arbitrary, not merely an 
absence of all selfish ambition, but a rare discretion in 
seizing the mean between conflicting exigencies." Like 

* " History of Greece," vol. iii., p. 212. 



George Grote. 1 1 9 

the endeavours of him who was " neither Lancelot nor 
another," all the aim of this knight of literature was 

" To keep down the base in man, 
To teach high thought, and amiable words. 
And courthness and the desire of fame. 
And love oftruth^ attd all that makes a manP 



T. B. M A C A U L A Y. 



T. B. MACAULAY. 



" 'Tis distance lends enchantment to the view;" and for 
the correct appreciation of a great number of things it is 
absohitely necessary we be not too near them. From 
the sides of Ben Nevis the surrounding country may be 
seen to the utmost advantage ; but he himself can never 
be seen to advantage from such an outlook. The 
beautiful outline, the vast bulk, and the rugged grandeur 
of the mountain are only understood by those who view 
him from a distance. The tourist at the foot of the Ben 
finds he grows on his vision and imagination, and that 
he gains truer ideas of his size and height, just in pro- 
portion as, within a certain range, he moves away from 
his base. But what holds good of distance in space also 
holds good of distance in time. The progress of the 
years brings understanding with it. Events but im- 
perfectly understood by the people of the age in which 
they occurred, are often perfectly comprehended by the 
men of succeeding generations. The evolutions that are 
dark and mysterious to us, will in all likelihood be clear 
and intelligible enough to our children's children. This 
is one of the reasons, amongst a number of others, which 
makes it so difficult for any writer to give a true historical 
account of the events of his own time. A contemporary 
author is ever too near his own age to be able to estimate 



124 Masters in History. 

correctly its moral height or its intellectual bulk. As 
the climber on the mountain, he may feel in some vague 
uncertain way that what is beneath and around him is 
vast and stupendous ; but that is all — his vantage ground 
forbids him taking the large and embracing view, and 
thoroughly precludes him from making a relative esti- 
mate. [Gibbon illustrated all this to the full. While 
that great historian had open eyes before the minutest 
events of the Roman Empire in the far past age of 
Constantine, he was blind to the vast forces at work in 
France in his own time. | It mattered not that these 
forces were operating strongly, and were certain to bring 
about vast results ; too near to the proud current, he 
seemed incapable of calculating either its direction or 
speed. 

The lives of historical personages being of the sub- 
ject-matter of history, it follows that the appreciation 
of their work must answer to the same laws as the 
other events that form part of the historical narrative. 
There is no fear that any man who has in him the 
real substance of greatness can by any possibility be for- 
gotten. It need cause us no uneasiness whatever that 
the stream of time will wash out their names from the 
memories of men. In all greatness there is '' a divinity 
that grows not old j " and as the rock to the fisherman 
sailing out from beneath it seems to loom higher, so, as 
the tide of time, bearing mankind on its breast, takes 
them further and further away from any truly noble life, 
rather, as they are borne onward, than such a life be- 
coming dimmer and more indistinct until it finally dis- 
appears, will the divinity that is in it rise on the view and 
stand out in bolder relief. Many historical personages 
are like their oil memorials of the gallery thus far — they 
are improved by age, and are best seen when seen from 
a distance. 



Macaulay. 125 

There are not wanting evidences that time is begin- 
ning to have a kindly effect on the memory of Macaulay. 
What was trivial in the man is fast sinking out of sight ; 
what was great is coming more and more into prominence. 
The bitter things he spoke in his times of temper, with 
the harsh things he wrote in his hours of passion, are 
fast being forgotten, and only that the finer qualities of 
his genius may be the better studied and remembered. 
Thinking of the elegant poet, people are letting go their 
recollections of the brusque gentleman ; with the ornate 
works of the unparalleled essayist in their hands, men 
are willing to leave to oblivion the antipathetic and 
sometimes vindictive reviewer; and passing over the 
bitter partisan, the people of England are evermore read- 
ing with increased pleasure the work of the matchless 
historian of their country. There is no mistaking the 
finer tone which the national portrait of Macaulay is 
taking from the course of the years. We remember a 
sketch of Macaulay in a certain gallery of literary por- 
traits that is wholly acid ; * we don't forget another able 
paper,! amongst a number of others still abler, by Dr 
Hutchison Stirling, where the acidity is not nearly so 
prevalent ; but the best estimate of his character we 
have seen is that by Mr Gladstone. J It is the most 
recent, as also the sweetest and most penetrating ; and it 
has the distinguishing merit of being neither ill-natured, 
partial, nor partizan — three faults strangely common in 
most writers on England's most popular historian. The 
difficulties that have lain in the way hitherto of forming 
a correct estimate of the life and work of Macaulay are 

* Gilfillan's "Gallery of Literary Portraits," 

t " Jerold, Tennyson, Macaulay, with other Critical Essays," by 
J. H. Stirling, LL.D. 

t "Gleanings of Past Years," by W. E. Gladstone, M.P., 
vol. II, 



126 Masters in History. 

sufficiently apparent. He was a poet, and consequently 
a subject to be scoffed at by the prosaic; he was a 
violent Whig, and consequently when spoken of by 
members of either party in the State, it was either in 
fulsome praise or in terms of unscrupulous detraction. 
When he was stung, as he often was, he stung in return, 
and almost invariably he left more poison in the skin of 
his enemy than ever the enemy could lodge in his. His 
powers of trenchant criticism made him feared, his suc- 
cess made him envied, and the vast literary reputation 
he eventually built up for himself stirred the spirit of 
jealousy amongst a countless number of little and in- 
significant spirits. These and other influences have pre- 
vented the prevalence of just notions respecting the 
character of Macaulay. Glorified as he is on the one 
hand by partizanship, and dwarfed as he is on the other 
by the influences of still surviving prejudices, he cannot 
be said as yet to have received that place in our literary 
history which, when maturer judgments prevail, he will 
ultimately occupy. 

When we look into the opinions of contemporary 
writers it would seem as if Macaulay's existence was a 
perfect intellectual puzzle, so highly is he spoken of by 
some, so bitterly is he written of by others. So far, how- 
ever, from his life containing any irreconcilable elements, 
ere many years are gone students of our literature, we 
are persuaded, will find in it no puzzle at all, but that 
it is one of the simplest and most accountable. Its 
literary unity is even now perfectly apparent. Macaulay's 
essays are ah exercises in history \ with only one or two 
exceptions they are all exercises in English history. To 
his great work his Essays bear the relation which aisle 
and chapel bear to the whole cathedral — the minor 
buildings are included in the larger structure, but while 



Macaulay, 127 

they have a unity of their own, they look somewhat 
insignificant in comparison with the vaster edifice of 
which they form a part, and whose design they help to 
complete. Nor does Macaulay's poetry come in to break 
this unity, but rather to add to and soften its otherwise 
somewhat hard outline. It is the tracery and carved 
cornicing of the general design. It is a great mistake, 
however, to suppose that all Macaulay's poetry is em- 
bodied in the " Lays." The essays on Clive and Hastings 
have a marked poetic colouring, and with fine effect in 
all his poetical critiques he brings the ideal faculty to 
bear on the interpretation and analysis of its own pro- 
ducts. A certain glow and imaginative enthusiasm runs 
through his whole prose; now penetrating it like a 
spirit, now hanging round it like a subtle fragrance, it 
contributes largely to that enthralling interest which his 
writings excite in so large a measure. It is the embodi- 
ment of this enthusiasm in his most casual literary effort^ 
which makes papers written only with the object of 
satisfying the requirements of the hour likely to survive 
with the survival of our Hterature. What has been 
marked by the critics as the outcome of a repre- 
hensible and even lying exaggeration, is in reality the 
product of a quick fancy and a lively imagination. It is 
by the exercise of these powers we breathe again in his 
writings the heated atmosphere of popular assemblies, 
and live over once more exciting scenes of revolution or 
of blood. 

While, however, Macaulay was largely possessed of 
the poetic temperament, he had few of the poet's fail- 
ings. A certain resentment and irritability, the products 
of acute sensitiveness, united to a susceptibility to be 
influenced by flattery, possibly sum up the extent of his 
weaknesses in this direction. In his work he was never 



128 Masters in History. 

trammelled by the impetuosities, the scruples, or the 
passions of genius. He was most unpoetically regular 
and methodical in all his habits, and there can be no 
doubt whatever, had he shown less perseverance, less 
concentration of purpose, less capacity for continued 
intellectual exertions, or less sobriety of judgment, the 
intermittent efforts of his genius would hardly have saved 
his name from oblivion. The popularity of Macaulay's 
works far transcends the popularity of the works of either 
Gibbon or Grote, and yet in the intrinsic worth of his intel- 
lect he is probably inferior to both. If not a depth, nor 
even a solidity, of scholarship, there is in the writings of 
Macaulay a sparkle and light which we will seek for in 
vain in the works of either Gibbon or of Grote. And so 
far his Hfe is like his writing, if neither singularly deep nor 
luminous, it has yet that sparkle which betrays movement 
and change, and a multitude of polished facets. 
• Macaulay was of Scotch extraction. His great-grand- 
father was minister of Tiree and Coll. The Highland 
pastor had his difficulties to contend with. The laird of 
Ardchattan took away his stipend by decreet. The 
minister was in delicate health, and the two islands were 
exposed and unhealthy. Moreover there was no church, 
no fund for communion elements, no mortifications for 
schools or charitable purposes. In truth, Aulay 
Macaulay, in the beginning of the eighteenth century, 
summed up in his own person the whole ecclesias- 
tical estabhshment of the desolate islands of Tiree and 
Coll. Under such circumstances we may conceive that 
the Rev. Mr Macaulay heard gladly " the call " of the 
Harris people to come over and help them. 

Although, as may be guessed, the worldly circum- 
stances of Aulay were straitened enough, nevertheless he 
was the father of fourteen young Highlanders. Of these, 






Macmday. 129 

Kenneth, who entered the church, and eventually be- 
came minister of Ardnamurchan, is not wholly unknown 
to fame. He wrote a history of St Kilda, a work 
which, little known as it was, did not escape the 
notice of Johnson. The great English scholar had read 
the book with pleasure, and certain allusions it con- 
tained touched his superstitious notions. The industry of 
Boswell has preserved to us Johnson's comment on the his- 
tory. " Macaulay," said Johnson, " who writes the account 
of St Kilda, set out with a prejudice against prejudice, and 
wanted to be a smart modern thinker ; and yet affirms 
for a truth that when a ship arrives there all the inhabi- 
tants are seized with a cold." * When Johnson took 
his northern tour he met Kenneth Macaulay, who had 
by this time become minister of Calder. Something in 
Johnson's congratulation did not please the Scottish 
parson j something in Macaulay was not satisfactory to 
the Englishman. By-and-by, as the conversation went 
on, Johnson showed himself the Ursa Major with a 
vengeance. Next morning, however, the scholar be- 
thought himself, and was pleased to atone for his rudeness 
of the previous evening. It was, however, not Kenneth, 
the eldest son of old Aulay, that was the grandfather of 
the historian. He, too, was in the church ; he, too, met 
Dr Johnson ; and he, too, like his brother, had an un- 
seemly altercation with the scholar. In this instance 
the clergyman was the first offending party, and in this 
instance also reconcilement succeeded rupture. " Next 
morning," says Boswell, " Mr Macaulay breakfasted with 
us, nothing hurt or dismayed by last night's correction. 
Being a man of good sense, he had a just admiration of 
Dr Johnson." 

John Macaulay was twice married, and by his second 
* Boswell's "Life of Johnson," chap. xv. 
I 



130 Masters in History. 

wife Margaret, daughter of Colin Campbell of Inver- 
seger, he had twelve of a family. He was minister of 
various parishes, but eventually he settled in Cardross in 
Dumbartonshire. He had the patronage of the Duke of 
Argyll, but his various translations he owed as much to 
his fluency and abilities as a popular preacher as to any 
influence lying beyond his own. The living of Cardross, 
though somewhat beyond the average of the livings of 
the Scottish clergy, is still not so large as to support in 
anything like aflluence such a numerous household as 
that of John Macaulay. The children of Cardross manse 
were consequently brought up on the plainest fare j but 
so far as air, scenery, and solid paternal nurture in things 
human and divine were concerned, they had placed each 
day before them of the very best. In the grandson sur- 
vived the effects of the life and discipline of the Cardross 
manse. One day, at the house of Lord Ashburton, 
Carlyle thought to himself, as he looked on the features 
of Macaulay in thoughtful repose over a book, " Well ! 
any one can see you are a homely sort of fellow, made 
out of oatmeal." 

Several of John Macaulay's children rose to positions 
of eminence. One became a distinguished clergyman 
of the Church of England, and eventually was presented 
to the Hving of Rothley by Mr Thomas Babington, the 
owner of Rothley Temple, a gentleman whom he had 
tutored in his student days, and who also married one of 
the young ladies of Cardross manse. Another of the 
sons succeeded the father in the ministry of the parish, 
but of all the family Zachary displayed the most solid 
acquirements of character, and became the most famous. 
At the early age of sixteen he was sent to Jamaica to 
assist in the office work of a large estate. Soon he 
became sole manager, and thus was brought into inti- 



Macaulay, 1 3 1 

mate contact with every kind of slave life. Early pre- 
possessions were strengthened by more intimate know- 
ledge, and he grew to hate the whole system. John 
Macaulay thought that religion and slavery were com- 
patible, and capable of working together -, the son, on 
the other hand, was a Christian of less compromising a 
type, and in his heart he forbade the banns. He tried 
for a time to make the best of his position ; but, by-and- 
by, finding that kind treatment and the exercise of a 
gentle and compromising spirit were utterly powerless 
against the deeper evils of the slavery system, he threw 
up a situation which his conscience would allow him 
no longer to hold, and returned to England. Zachary 
Macaulay was not long without work of a more con- 
genial kind. Ten years previous to his return all slaves 
had been declared freemen so soon as their feet touched 
the soil of our island. But what to make of the liber- 
ated but expatriated slaves was still a difficult question. 
Great hopes were entertained that spheres of usefulness 
would open up before them could civilization be made 
to gain a permanent footing on the African continent. 
To establish this object a company was formed, char- 
tered by the Crown. Wilberforce and Granville Sharpe 
were members of the managing Board. By this Board 
Zachary Macaulay was appointed Second Member of 
the Sierra Leone Council. He sailed in 1793 for Africa, 
and soon attained the position of Governor. The matters 
of the colony were not long, after many trying ordeals, 
in prospering under his care. The Governor worked as 
only an anti-slavery enthusiast could, but he also worked 
in the very best spirit. The secret of his diligence flowed 
from deeper sources than merely the desire to discharge 
duty in such a manner that the esteem of his masters 
might be secured. He was a man deeply religious ; he 



132 Masters in Histojy, 

would allow himself on no occasion the slightest indivi- 
dual licence ; and down to the very smallest matters he 
made his conduct square with his religious convictions. 
Sir James Stephen says justly of him : — " His earthward 
affections, active and all-enduring as they were, could 
yet thrive without the support of human sympathy, be- 
cause they were sustained by so abiding a sense of the 
divine presence, and so absolute a submission to the 
divine will, as raised him habitually to that higher region 
where the reproach of man could not reach, and the 
praise of man might not presume to follow him." 

When everything was going on prosperously in the 
colony eight French sail appeared off the coast. In a 
short time they were raking the streets with bullets and 
grape, and after this, for the most part, harmless diver- 
sion, they proceeded to the more serious work of sacking 
the town. After the visit of the sans cullotes, Zachary 
Macaulay worked hard to have things put in order, and 
when the colony had been once more put on its feet, 
returned to England to recruit his health, which had 
been considerably impaired by his exertion. 

On Macaulay's return, and when on a visit to Hannah 
More at Cowslip Green, near Bristol, he met, and fell in 
love with a pretty young Quaker, Miss SeHna Mills, a 
former pupil of Hannah. The friends of the lady 
threw difficulties in the way of the match. The lady, 
however, was obdurate; but it was not until Zachary 
Macaulay had been out to Sierra Leone and back again 
that the couple were married at Bristol in 1799. 

Of this marriage Lord Macaulay was the first fruit. 
He was bom at Rothley Temple, on the 25th of October 
1800, a date he liked to associate with the anniversary 
of Agincourt. In the November following he was 
baptized in the private chapel of the house. The Rev. 



Macaulay. 1 3 3 

Aulay Macaulay and Mr and Mrs Babington acted as 
sponsors, and the child received the names Thomas 
Babington. The two years following the birth were 
spent by Mr and Mrs Macaulay in a house in Birchin 
Lane, where the Sierra Leone Company had its office. 
It was a dreary residence, and one day when father and 
son were surveying the roofs of the neighbouring houses 
from the nursery window, and particularly a great 
chimney that was belching forth vast volumes of black 
smoke, the child, in wonder, asked the parent, " Is that 
hell?" What answer was given does not appear. 
George Otto Trevelyan, who tells the story, only says, 
that "the inquiry was received with grave dis- 
pleasure, which at the time the child could not under- 
stand." 

The next removal of the family was to a house in the 
High Street of Clapham. Here the boy spent the best part 
of his childhood, and here his precious powers developed 
themselves. He used, eating bread and butter the while, 
to amuse the domestics by expounding from a volume 
as big as himself \ and remembering, evidently without 
effort, the phraseology of the books that came in his way, 
they used to say of little Tom that he talked " quite 
printed words." One day Hannah More, paying a visit 
to Clapham, tells us she had a surprise. Cahing at Mr 
Macaula/s, the door was answered by a pretty, slight 
child, who told her that his parents were from home, 
but if she would be good enough to come in, he would 
bring her a glass of spirits ! On another occasion, 
having had some hot coffee spilt on his legs by a friend 
of his father's, he answered a lady, who asked him 
some time afterwards how he was feeling, in the words, 
" Thank you, madam, the agony is considerably abated." 
Every place on the common where he played had its 



1 34 Masters in History. 

name. One ridge was " The Alps," and a slight rising, 
Mount Sinai ! 

In these early years the boy would stay with Hannah 
More for weeks together, and she exercised on his mind 
a most salutary influence. She fostered his great budding 
powers, but, at the same time, she never suffered him to 
forget he was still a child. All things considered these 
years were possibly — we could almost say, undoubtedly 
— the years of his greatest literary activity. To the boy 
everything was new and nothing difficult. What he read 
he remembered, what he thought he found it delightful 
to express, and what he undertook gave him pleasure to 
perform. He was ready to try his hand on hymn or 
epic, on essay or history. He wrote a paper which he 
proposed to have translated into Malabar to persuade 
the people of Travancore to embrace the Christian 
religion ! Reading Scott's " Lay of the Last Minstrel " 
and " Marmion," his youthful imagination was so excited 
that he commenced a poem to be called " The Battle of 
Cheviot." In two days he had completed three cantos 
of one hundred and twenty lines each. He also wrote 
an epitome of universal history " from the time of a king 
who knew not Joseph," down to the time of Oliver 
Cromwell, "an unjust and wicked man." "Fingal, a 
poem in XII. Books," also belongs to this period. Nor, 
though these juvenile products were many, were they by 
any means deficient in either fire or force. One who 
has read them, as they have been preserved by the family, 
says, " They go swinging along with plenty of animation 
and no dearth of historical and geographical allusion." 

Macaulay's precocity was altogether remarkable and 
unaccountable ; indeed, if we except the manifestation of 
early genius in Chatterton, it is without a parallel in our 
literary history. Nor was it, what is such a common 



Macaulay. 135 

sight, a mere boyish fervour, to pass gradually away with 
growing years, until in manhood it becomes finally 
extinct. In this case the splendour of the flower was 
not to belie the quality of the fruit. Clever boys are 
often spoiled, but with regard to young Macaulay every 
effort was made to kill those seeds of vanity which 
almost invariably turn what is ability in the boy to 
ignorant assumption in the man. Master Tom was no 
doubt far cleverer than those twice his years, but he was 
never let know but that every boy was just as clever 
as he. 

In 1812 Tom, having got beyond the capacities of 
Clapham, was sent by his father to a private school, 
kept by the Rev. Mr Preston, at Little Shelford, a village 
in the immediate neighbourhood of Cambridge. The 
parent had fixed on this school chiefly because of the 
Low Church views of the master. He knew how to 
teach, but he was a man of bad taste, and did not stop 
to consider circumstances. When teaching the boys he 
dragged in theological topics, and was not slow to break 
a problem in Euclid that he might ask his pupils con- 
cerning their spiritual welfare. Considering Zachary 
Macaulay's opinions, he must have been pleased to hear 
from Mr Preston, after he had taken Tom through hands, 
" Your lad is a fine fellow. He shall stand before kings. 
He shall not stand before mean men." 

Was there ever a boy away at school about whom 
parents at home were not anxious ? Was there ever a 
boy so situated about whom there never came to his 
parents' ears malevolent whispers of questionable pro- 
ceedings? Whether such a boy ever existed we know 
not j but this we aver, he is not found in the person of 
young Tom Macaulay. By some mysterious messenger 
or other it came to the knowledge of the inmates of the 



136 Masters in History. 

house in the High Street of Clapham, that the lad at 
school was getting famous as a loud, contumacious fellow. 
The report called forth the following letter from the 
parent : — " March 4, 18 14. My dear Tom, — In taking 
up my pen this morning a passage in Cowper almost 
involuntarily occurred to me. You will find it at length 
in his Conversation : — 

* Ye powers who rule the tongue, if such there are, 
And make colloquial happiness your care, 
Preserve me from the thing I dread and hate, 
A duel in the form of a debate. 
Vociferated logic kills me quite, 
A noisy man is always in the right.' 

You know how much such a quotation as this would fall 
in with my notions — averse as I am to loud and noisy 
tones, and self-confident, overwhelming, and yet perhaps 
very unsound arguments. And you will remember how 
anxiously I dwelt upon this point while you were at 
home. I have been in hopes that this half-year would 
witness a great change in you in this respect. My 
hopes, however, have been a little damped by something 
which I heard last week through a friend, who seemed 
to have received an impression that you had gained a 
high distinction among the young gentlemen at Shelford 
by the loudness and vehemence of your tones. Now, 
my dear Tom, you cannot doubt that this gives me 
painj and it does so not so much on account of the 
thing itself, as because I consider it a pretty infaUible 
test of the mind within. I do long and pray most 
earnestly that the ornament of a meek and quiet spirit 
may be substituted for vehemence and self-confidence, 
and that you may be as much distinguished for the 
former as you ever have been for the latter. It is a 
school in which I am not willing that any child of mine 



Macaulay. 137 

should take a high degree." The letter of the parent 
called forth the following from the boy; and let the 
masterliness of the boy's reply be noticed with regard to 
the crime laid to his charge : — "Shelford, April 1 1, 18 14. — 
My dear mamma, — The news is glorious indeed. Peace, 
peace with a Bourbon, with a descendant of Henri 
Quatre, with a prince who is bound to us by all the ties 
of gratitude ! I have some hopes that it will be a lasting 
peace, that the troubles of the last twenty years may 
make kings and nations wiser. I cannot conceive a 
greater punishment to Buonaparte than that which the 
allies have inflicted on him. How can his ambitious 
mind support it? All his great projects and schemes, 
which once made every throne in Europe tremble, are 
buried in the solitude of an Italian isle. How miracu- 
lously everything has been conducted ! We almost seem 
to hear the Almighty saying to the fallen tyrant, ' For 
this cause have I raised thee up, that I might show in 
thee my power.' As I am in very great haste with this 
letter, I shall have but little time to write. I am sorry 
to hear that some nameless friend of papa's denounced 
my voice as remarkably loud. I have consequently 
resolved to speak in a moderate key, except on the 
undermentioned special occasions. Imprimis, when I am 
speaking at the same time with three others. Secondly, 
when I am praising the Christimi Observer.'^ Thirdly, 
when I am praising Mr Preston or his sisters, I may be 
allowed to speak in the loudest voice, that they may hear 
me. I saw to-day that greatest of Churchmen, that 
pillar of Orthodoxy, that true friend to the Liturgy, that 
mortal enemy to the Bible Society — Herbert Marsh, 
D.D., Professor of Divinity on Lady Margaret's founda- 
tion." [With this gentleman Zachary Macaulay was at 
* Of this periodical Zachary Macaulay was editor. 



13B Masters in History. 

that time holding a bitter controversy, and he was loudly 
denouncing him in the pages of the Christian Observer. 
By seeming to justify the father's loud speaking, he 
delicately suggests that the advice which he gives, it 
might not be amiss to take. The son is not finding 
fault with the parent's declamation !] ''I stood looking at 
him for about ten minutes, and shall always continue to 
maintain that he is a very ill-favoured gentleman as far 
as outward appearance is concerned." 

Instead of taking so seriously to heart the report that 
was brought him of his son's loud talking, Zachary 
Macaulay might have been very glad those who were 
willing to speak evil of the boy had nothing worse to say. 
Such as it was, this was the only occasion while Tom was 
at school the elder Macaulay ever found it necessary to 
call the youthful behaviour of his son in question. From 
Shelford Mr Preston removed to Aspenden ; but neither 
at the one place nor the other was there the slightest 
fear of young Macaulay being led away by the influences 
of his companions. At school he was undoubtedly 
clever; but he cannot have been very popular. He 
never joined his class-fellows in their sports, and he was 
utterly unable to take part in any game. While they 
were roistering in the play-ground or tumbling in the 
park, he was busy with his books, and- gathering from all 
quarters vast stores of knowledge. The secret of his 
boundless acquirements was his quick, almost intuitive 
discernment, and his extraordinary memory. "To the 
end he read books faster than other people skimmed 
them, and skimmed them as fast as anyone else could 
turn the leaves." His intellectual appetite was simply 
prodigious, and it was far from particular about the 
pabulum set before it. Along with the best works of 
genius was devoured the most miserable trash. It 



Macaulay. 1 39 

mattered not what it was — Shakespeare or Mrs Meek — 
what was read was hardly ever to be forgotten. Two 
pieces of rhyme read in a provincial newspaper, as he 
waited in a coffee-room at Cambridge for the post-chaise, 
forty years afterwards he could recall word for word. 
On an afternoon, visiting at a friend's house with his 
father, he discovered on the table " The Lay of the Last 
Minstrel." While the elder Macaulay talked, the son 
was busy with the poem. He had no more than time to 
peruse it once j but coming home, he was able to repeat 
to his mother several cantos of the work. Once when 
going over to Ireland, he beguiled the monotony of the 
sea passage by reading over from his memory, as from a 
book, the first half of '' Paradise Lost." He made the 
boast that, if by any chance " Paradise Lost " and the 
''Pilgrim's Progress" were destroyed from the face of the 
earth, he would undertake- t-o^ reproduce them both from 
his recollection. No wonder some people would have 
been proud ''to be as sure of anything as Tom Macaulay 
was of everything." 

Young Macaulay's first appearance in print happened 
under somewhat peculiar circumstances. The views of the 
son, on many things, differed from those of the father, 
and novel-reading was one of the points on which they 
were hopelessly at variance. On this subject the boy 
addressed a letter to the editor of the Christian Observer, 
defending works of fiction, and eulogising Fielding and 
Smollett. This letter, Zachary Macaulay having incauti- 
ously published, brought him a great deal of trouble. 
The editor was placed in the position of having counten- 
anced opinions which, in his editorial capacity, he should 
have taken every pains to repress, and his embarrassment 
was increased by the discovery of the fact that the letter 
was from the pen of his son. In time the storm blew 



i2|.o Masters in History. 

by, and as there can be no doubt the editor must have to 
some extent sympathised with the temper of the letter 
of his anonymous correspondent, the affair passed off with- 
out father and son ever exchanging an angry word. 

Strictly speaking, Macaulay cannot be said to have had 
any intellectual childhood. While still a mere babe, he 
expressed himself in the fashion of a man ; while still a 
youth, he was possessed by the matured opinions that 
are only formed in others by years and long experience \ 
" the long dark nights and the sweet society of books," 
two things which were the solace of De Quincey's age, 
this Clapham boy found his special delight before he had 
well entered on his teens. We might conceive the fol- 
lowing to have been written by some old man of sixty- 
five did we not know it to be the production of a youth 
not yet fifteen : — 

"Aspenden Hall, August 22, 181 5. Dear Sir, — I 
know not whether ^peeping at the world through the 
loopholes of retreat ' be the best way of forming us for 
engaging in its busy and active scenes. I am sure it is 
not a way to my taste. Poets may talk of the beauties 
of nature, the enjoyments of a country life, and rural 
innocence : but there is another kind of life which, though 
unsung by bards, is yet to me infinitely superior to the 
dull uniformity of country life. London is the place for 
me. Its smoky atmosphere and its muddy river charm 
me more than the pure air of Hertfordshire, and the crys- 
tal currents of the river Rib. Nothing is equal to the 
splendid varieties of London life, * the fine flow of Lon- 
don talk,' and the dazzling brilliancy of London spec- 
tacles. Such are my sentiments, and, if ever I publish 
poetry, it shall not be pastoral. Nature is the last god- 
dess to whom my devoirs shall be paid. — Yours most faith- 
fully, Thomas B. Macaulay." 



Macaulay, 141 

Mr Preston having done everything for Macaulay he 
could, and the young man having done more for himself 
than ever his master was able, in October 181 8 he en- 
tered Trinity College, Cambridge. At first he lodged 
and studied with Henry Sykes Thornton, the eldest son 
of an intimate friend of his father. The two young men 
were fast friends during their whole college career ; but 
this primary arrangement was soon broken through, as 
the studies of the men began to run in different chan- 
nels. Mathematics were the passion of Thornton, but 
already Macaulay had begun to regard " the hard-grained 
muses of the cube and square " with positive aversion. 
Removed to apartments within the walls of Trinity, he 
was free to pursue the bent of his own mind, and into all 
college life he entered with extraordinary zest. Getting 
up his work with great ease and rapidity, he was ready 
for conversation and debate with every caller. Sleep was 
a secondary matter with the undergraduate ; rather than 
run the risk of not seeing a friend off in the morning, he 
would talk with him through the night, and he never 
thought of repose as long as a taper glimmered from the 
windows of a student's chamber. Greater reader than 
ever, and harder student than before, he was by no means 
either book-worm or pedant. Macaulay loved the society 
of intimate friends as much as that of his books, and the 
opinions derived from the latter he tested and aired in his 
conversations with the former. His most intimate col- 
lege acquaintances were Derwent Coleridge and Henry 
Nelson, who afterwards became the brother-in-law of Der- 
went. In the year beneath him were the undergraduates 
who afterwards adorned the titles of Lord Grey, Lord 
Belper, and Lord Romilly, and more especially was there 
that remarkable spirit Charles Austin, at this time a stu- 
dent of Jesus. People wondered at the vast influence of 



142 Masters in History, 

Austin over Macaulay j they could not understand how a 
man of but shght classical attainments could exercise any 
power over a Craven scholar. But resent it as they 
might, the influence was patent enough to all. When 
Macaulay went to Cambridge he was a Tory, but when 
he left it he was an unmistakable Whig. The explana- 
tion of this change, and the source of those ideas that 
coloured all his after life, are only to be found in his inti- 
macy with Austin of Jesus. This young man was in 
philosophy a utilitarian, in pohtics a radical, and in 
church matters a dissenter. To his own philosophical 
and political views Austin seems to have completely con- 
verted Macaulay ; with his ideas of church government, 
however, he could never wholly indoctrinate the mind 
of his friend — his eloquence and subtlety could not destroy 
Macaulay's faith in a National establishment, although 
there are not wanting evidences, they shook it very con- 
siderably. When afterwards* Macaulay, confessing him- 
self a supporter of the EstabHshed Church, yet declared 
if all were rich and there were no poor in the country he 
would be a Voluntary, it would seem to us that Austin 
only needed to have been at very little more pains indeed 
to have made the opinions of his friend square with his 
own on this matter also. There can never be more than 
the slightest boundary between men whose only differ- 
ence consists in the views they hold on the paltry subject 
of how their ministers should be paid. 

With these and other companions Macaulay spent his 
time at Cambridge most happily. They attended classes 
in the morning, they strolled in the afternoon, they read 
in the evening, they fed on roast turkey and milk -punch 
at midnight, and when occasion would allow, they spent 
the small hours sauntering in the moonlight. These 
* Speech, June 6, 1854. 



Macaulay. 143 

college days Macaulay never forgot — each recollection of 
them brought him a separate pleasure. They afforded 
him a never-failing subject of talk for his whole life. 
One morning, in subsequent years, Austin and he 
happened, at Lord Lansdowne's, to fall on college topics 
after breakfast. The result was, both men drew their 
chairs to either end of the chimney-piece, and talking at 
each other across the hearth-rug, they kept their com- 
panions of the breakfast-table — ladies, artists, politi- 
cians, and diners-out — an unbroken company until the 
sounding of the dinner-gong. Trevelyan says : " The 
only dignity, in his later days, he was known to covet, 
was an honorary fellowship which would have allowed 
him again to look through his window upon the college 
grass-plots, and to sleep within sound of the splashing of 
the fountain ; again to breakfast on commons, and dine 
beneath the portraits of Newton and Bacon on the dais 
of the hall; again to ramble by moonlight round 
Neville's cloister, discoursing the picturesque but some- 
what exoteric philosophy which it pleased him to call by 
the name of metaphysics. From the door of his rooms, 
along the wall of the chapel, there runs a flagged path- 
way, which affords an acceptable relief from the rugged 
pebbles that surround it. Here, as a Bachelor of Arts, 
he would walk, book in hand, morning after morning, 
throughout the long vacation, reading with the same 
eagerness and the same rapidity whether the volume was 
the most abstruse of treatises, the loftiest of poems, or 
the flimsiest of novels. That was the spot where, in his 
failing years, he loved to renew the feelings of the past ; 
and there are those who can never revisit it without the 
fancy that there, if anywhere, his dear shade must linger." 
In his college studies Macaulay won many special 
victories. He twice gained the Chancellor's medal for 



144 Masters in History. 

the best poem. This prize he also lost once. On that 
occasion the subject was "Waterloo," but Macaulay's 
poem, though one of marked abiUty, was shaped from 
too simple a model to satisfy the requirements of univer- 
sity culture. He also gained the ten pound prize given 
to " the Junior Bachelor of Trinity College who wrote 
the best essay on the Conduct and Character of William 
the Third." For the most part, university essays are at 
best but crude performances, but in his paper on William, 
the undergraduate showed he had in him the genuine 
stuff which goes to the making of a great historian. We 
cannot but acknowledge the force and promise of such a 
passage as the following : — " To have been a sovereign, 
yet the champion of liberty \ a revolutionary leader, yet 
the supporter of social order, is the peculiar glory of 
William. He knew where to pause. He outraged no 
national prejudice. He abolished no ancient form. He 
altered no venerable name. He saw that the existing in- 
stitutions possessed the greatest capabilities of excellence, 
and that stronger sanctions and clearer definitions were 
alone required to make the practice of the British con- 
stitution as admirable as the theory. Thus he imparted 
to innovation the dignity and stability of antiquity. He 
transferred to a happier order of things the associations 
which had attached the people to their former govern- 
ment. As the Roman warrior, before he assaulted Veii, 
invoked its guardian gods to leave its walls, and to accept 
the worship and patronise the cause of the besiegers, this 
great prince, in attacking a system of oppression, sum- 
moned to his aid the venerable principles and deeply- 
seated feelings to which that system was indebted for 
protection." It is worth while contrasting the views 
and expression of the undergraduate with the matured 
opinions and formed style of the historian. We can 



Macau lay. 145 

hardly mistake the Ten Pound Prizeman in the following 
passage : — " The highest eulogy * which can be pro- 
nounced on the revolution of 1688 is this, that it was 
our last revolution. Several generations have now 
passed away since any wise and patriotic Englishman 
has meditated resistance to the estabHshed government. 
In all honest and reflecting minds there is a conviction, 
daily strengthened by experience, that the means of 
effecting every improvement which the constitution 
requires may be found within the constitution itself. 
Now, if ever, we ought to be able to appreciate the 
whole importance of the stand which was made by our 
forefathers against the house of Stuart. All round us 
the world is convulsed by the agonies of great nations. 
Governments, which lately seemed likely to stand during 
ages, have been, on a sudden, shaken and overthrown. 
The proudest capitals of Western Europe have streamed 
with civil blood. All evil passions, the thirst of gain 
and the thirst of vengeance, the antipathy of class to 
class, the antipathy of race to race, have broken loose 
from the control of divine and human laws. Fear and 
anxiety have clouded the faces and depressed the hearts 
of millions. Trade has been suspended and industry 
paralysed. The rich have become poor, and the poor 
have become poorer, doctrines hostile to all sciences, to all 
acts, to all industry, to all domestic charities, — doctrines 
which, if carried into effect, would, in thirty years, undo 
all that thirty centuries had done for mankind, and 
would make the fairest provinces of France and Germany 
as savage as Congo or Patagonia, — have been avowed 
from the tribune and defended by the sword. Europe 
has been threatened with subjugation by barbarians, com- 
pared wdth whom the barbarians who marched under 
* " History of England," chap. x. 



146 Masters in History. 

Attila and Alboin were enlightened and humane. The 
truest friends of the people have, with deep sorrow, 
owned that interests more precious than any political 
privileges were in jeopardy, and that it might be neces- 
sary to sacrifice even liberty in order to save civilisation. 
Meanwhile, in our island, the regular course of govern- 
ment has never been for a day interrupted. The few 
bad men who longed for license and plunder have not 
had the courage to confront for one moment the strength 
of a loyal nation, rallied in formidable array round a 
parental throne. And if it be asked what has made us 
to differ from others, the answer is, that we never lost 
what others are wildly and blindly seeking to regain. It 
is because we had a preserving revolution in the seven- 
teenth century that we have not had a destroying revolu- 
tion in the nineteenth. It is because we had freedom in 
the midst of servitude that we have order in the midst of 
anarchy. For the authority of law, for the security of 
property, for the peace of our streets, for the happiness 
of our homes, our gratitude is due, under Him who 
raises and pulls down nations at His pleasure, to the 
long Parliament, to the Convention, and to William of 
Orange." 

The chief successes of Macaulay's university life were 
summed up in his Craven Scholarship and his Fellow- 
ship. For the latter of the two honours he had to com- 
pete three times. This was owing to his deficiency in 
mathematics, which study was to him the one bitter 
element in all his Cambridge life. So far from finding 
it a mental discipHne, he held it the embodiment of 
" starvation, confinement, torture, annihilation." It went 
against the grain of his nature, and he considered it dead- 
ened his perceptions of elegance and beauty. It made 
bis brain " as dry as the remainder biscuit after a voyage." 



Macaulay. 147 

He confessed to his mother a vague fear of becoming in 
the course of time a personification of Algebra, or a 
living trigometrical canon, or probably a walking table 
of logarithms ! It is very usual with university men to 
exalt those subjects in which they have excelled, but, like 
Grote, this was a mistake into which Macaulay never 
fell. He was ever as willing to acknowledge differences 
in intellectual as in sesthetical tastes ; and although he 
could find no pleasure in mathematical pursuits, he had 
a due appreciation of the science, and of the merits of a 
senior wrangler. Another mistake also, and one which 
presents special temptations to students who have dis- 
tinguished themselves in their university career, he never 
fell into — he never estimated academical honours above 
their intrinsic value. He clearly perceived the great 
error which men make who look upon them as ends and 
not as encouragements to learning. He saw that very 
often obscurity in a university career was succeeded by 
obscurity in life, but he also perceived that the defeats of 
the genuine student might have on his character as salu- 
tary effect as his triumphs. Nothing could be better 
than the following passage, which, while it was the pro- 
duct of his later years, embodies those mature views of 
university culture he entertained as early as his own 
student days : — " If a man," says Macaulay, " brings 
away from Cambridge self-knowledge, accuracy of mind, 
and habits of strong intellectual exertion, he has gained 
more than if he had made a display of showy superficial 
Etonian scholarship, got three or four Brown's medals, 
and gone forth into the world a schoolboy to the last. 
After all, what a man does at Cambridge is in itself 
nothing. If he make a poor figure in life, his having 
been senior wrangler or university scholar is never men- 
tioned but with derision. If he make a distinguished 



148 Masters in History. 

figure, his early honours merge in those of a later date. 
I hope I do not overrate my own place in the estimation 
of society. Such as it is. I would not give a halfpenny to 
add to the consideration which I enjoy all the considera- 
tion I should derive from having been senior wrangler. 
But I often regret, and even acutel)^, my want of a senior 
wrangler's knowledge of physics and mathematics ; and I 
regret still more some habits of mind which a senior 
wrangler is pretty sure to possess." 

In 1826, Macaulay was called to the bar, but Httle as 
he had liked mathematics he was to like law even less ; and 
being all his life dead against entering into any pursuit 
which did not go with his grain, he got no business to 
speak of either in London or on circuit, and his law life 
cannot be said to form any real period in his biography. 
While a barrister he was oftener to be found under the 
gallery of the House than in chambers or court, and he 
soon began to busy himself in other fields altogether. 
In 1823 Macaulay having met a number of his former 
university friends at Cambridge, they got set afloat 
Knight's Quarterly Magazine. To this Macaulay contri- 
buted largely for some time j but very soon his services 
were in demand in another and higher quarter. The 
Edinburgh Review had already been in existence for a 
quarter of a century ; but although it had attained a great 
circulation and wide influence, Jeffrey's vigilant mind 
was troubled by perceiving certain elements of decay. 
The old writers were getting every year more feeble, and 
the young men about Edinburgh being for the most part 
Tories, the editor wrote to a friend in London to see " if 
he could not lay his hand on some clever young man 
who could write for us." The search set afoot was re- 
warded by the discovery of Macaulay j and in the August 
of the same year in which the " clever young man " was 



Macaulay. 149 

unearthed by Jeffrey's literary detectives, the essay on 
Milton appeared in the Edinburgh. In that paper " the 
negligent search of a struggling gleaner had been re- 
warded with a sheaf" * indeed. In acknowledging the 
manuscript, ''The more I think," said Jeffrey, "the less 
I can conceive where you picked up that style." The pub- 
lication of the essay brought the young writer immediately 
into notice, and Murray declared it would be worth the 
copyright of " Childe Harold" to have Macaulay on the 
staff of the Quarterly. Exuberant in spirit, redundant 
in imagery, profuse in language, often flashy in style, its 
general construction condemned by the maturer judg- 
ment of the author, " Milton " is still a splendid produc- 
tion, and a worthy beginning to that matchless series of 
essays in which the genius of Macaulay is as fully ex- 
pressed as in his " History of England." 

Awaking on that August morning to find himself 
famous, we may conceive the lion hunters of the metro- 
polis must for the most part have been sadly disappointed 
when they came in sight of their quarry. What Gabriel 
was " to the unarmed youth of heaven who about him 
exercised heroic games," they certainly did not find 
Macaulay to be to the literary aspirants of his time. He 
had a short, squat figure — impertinently upright, some 
have said, by a long continued habit of looking up to 
bigger men — and a face square and homely, except when 
in conversation, on which occasions it reflected every 
mood and change of his mind. He loved to have his 
wardrobe fully stocked, but his clothes never seemed to 
fit him, and he never had the appearance of being well 
dressed. His neckcloth was always badly tied, and his 
hand thrust awkwardly into his waistcoat pocket. Lady 
Holland, for one, was disappointed with the new writer. 
* Macaulay 's " Essay on Milton." 



1 50 Masters in History. 

The first time she met him at Holland House she could 
not conceal her chagrin. " Mr Macaulay," said her lady- 
ship, "you are so different to what I expected. I 
thought you were dark and thin, but you are fair, and 
really, Mr Macaulay, you are fat." 

In society the plainness of his personal appearance 
was lost in the brilliancy of his conversation, and all 
bluntness of deportment was forgotten as soon as people 
came to understand the kindliness of his heart. His 
generosity was unbounded, and occasionally indiscri- 
minate j but it was a passion he never extended to writers 
of bad poetry or to political opponents. Every offence 
against his literary taste he punished without mercy, and 
the man was his enemy who either questioned his 
scholarship or opposed his particular poHtical views. 
To those he loved, he was as sweet as honey; but to 
those he hated, he was as cold as ice. This spirit must 
have made him an uncongenial companion on many 
occasions, and the traces to be found of its operation 
have in many instances disfigured his prose. Croker, he 
said, he hated more than cold veal. The " Shepherd " 
was right when he remarked on Macaulay's paper on that 
gentleman's edition of Boswell's Life of Johnson, " Fee ! 
faw ! fum ! I smell the bluid o' a pairty man." * Wil- 
son's attacks might have put a less eager spirit than 
Macaulay out of temper, but the latter was only rude when 
he said, " I can't stand your cock-fighting, cudgel-play- 
ing, grog-drinking Professor of Moral Philosophy." 

After leaving the university, Macaulay's only regular 
income was from his fellowship, and that did not amount 
to ;£"3oo a-year. In 1828, however, he was appointed 
by Lord Lyndhurst to a Commissionership of Bank- 
ruptcy ; and this office bringing him about ;£'6oo annually, 
* "Noctes Ambrosianse," Vol. III., p. 328. 



Macaulay. 151 

put away from him for the present many disturbing 
thoughts about the future. It would appear that, 
Macaulay being the son of a Tory family, the party had not 
yet given up hopes of winning him over to their cause. 
All doubt about the side which the young man was to 
take was, however, very soon set at rest, for in 1830, he 
accepted the influence of Lord Lansdowne, and took his 
seat in the Whig interest for the burgh of Calne. 

Before entering ParHament, besides his paper on 
Milton, he had contributed to the pages of the Edinburgh 
Review articles on MachiavelH, Hallam's " Constitutional 
History," and Southey's " Colloquies /' and all three being 
distinguished by the ability and vivacity which had cha- 
racterised his first contribution to that periodical, the 
public curiosity was piqued as to how the new author 
was likely to show himself in the presence of his betters. 
Macaulay was quite aware that the assembly of which he 
was now a member, was one, of all popular gatherings, 
the most fickle either to address or command. He was 
also aware that a man's success in other departments 
was rather a reason for expecting him to fail than suc- 
ceed in the House of Commons. " A place where Wal- 
pole succeeded and Addison failed ; where Dundas 
succeeded and Burke failed \ where Peel succeeds and 
Mackintosh fails; where Erskine and Scarlett were dinner- 
bells ; and where Lawrence and Jekyll, the two wittiest 
men, or nearly so, of their time, are thought bores," — was 
surely a strange place enough, and fitted to try any man's 
metal. In this, " the most peculiar assembly in all the 
world," Macaulay was destined to act a great part. He 
was never a parliamentary debater in the strict sense of 
the words ; the secret of his success was owing to the 
facility with which he could give forth his carefully-pre- 
pared speeches, word for word as they were composed in 



152 Masters in History. 

his study, and as if they had been extemporaneous utter- 
ances. He wanted the power of seizing on the circum- 
stances of the occasion — his method prevented any indul- 
gence in the repartee, the sarcasm, or the invective that 
is born of the moment ; but the elegant address, the 
studied antithesis, the lucid argument, and the culminat- 
ing oratory, triumphed over all other considerations, and 
ever gave him the full house and the rapt assembly. On 
the 5th of April 1830 he addressed the House for the 
first time. The question before Parliament was the Re- 
moval of Jewish Disabilities. The new member for 
Calne was heard with respect and attention throughout. 
His straightforward manner secured to him at once 
what he had on every successive occasion, the sympathy 
of his audience ; and the following from his maiden 
speech may be taken as a fair specimen of his spoken 
essays to the House of Commons : — " The power of 
which you deprive the Jew consists in maces and gold 
chains, and skins of parchment with pieces of wax 
dangling from their edges. The power which you leave 
the Jew is the power of principal over clerk, of master 
over servant, of landlord over tenant. As things now 
stand, a Jew may be the richest man in England. He 
may possess the means of raising this party and depress- 
ing that : of making East India directors : of making 
members of Parliament. The influence of a Jew may be 
of the first consequence in a war which shakes Europe to 
its centre. His power may come into play in assisting or 
thwarting the greatest plans of the greatest princes ; 
and yet, with all this confessed, acknowledged, undenied, 
you would have him deprived of power ! Does not wealth 
confer power ? How are we to permit all the consequences 
of that wealth but one ? I cannot conceive the nature 
of an argument that is to bear out that position. If we 



Macaulay, 153 

were to be called on to revert to the day when the 
warehouses of Jews were torn down and pillaged, the 
theory would be comprehensible. But we have to 
do with a persecution so delicate, that there is no ab- 
stract rule for its guidance. You tell us the Jews have 
no legal right to power, and I am bound to admit it ; 
but, in the same way, three hundred years ago they had 
no legal right to be in England, and six hundred years 
ago they had no legal right to the teeth in their heads. 
But, if it is the moral right we are to look at, I hold on 
every principle of moral obligation the Jew has a right to 
political power." There spoke the genuine Liberal. 

Entering with great spirit into every phase of parlia- 
mentary life for a time, he seems specially to have en- 
joyed the elegant society into which his position in the 
House and his literary reputation gave him the entree. 
In fact, during his first years in the Commons, he became 
an inveterate " diner-out," and in the quiet and refine- 
ment of Holland House he ever found a most agreeable 
retreat. In this literary haunt he associated with all the 
leading men of his time, and on his every visit Lady 
Holland received him with a graciousness she manifested 
to few. Macaulay admired her ladyship's talents and 
acquirements; but particularly the order in which she 
kept her multitudinous guests. " It is to one," said he 
in a letter to his sister; "it is to one 'Go,' and he goeth ; 
and to another ' Do this,' and it is done. ' Ring the 
bell, Mr Macaulay.' 'Lay down that screen. Lord 
Russell ; you will spoil it.' ' Mr Allen, take a candle 
and show Mr Cradock the picture of Buonaparte.'" In 
those stirring years he met at Holland House many whose 
reputation was of a purely literary character, and with 
such he formed intimacies of a more or less enduring 
kind. The sight of a Tory awakened in him bitterness 



154 Masters in History. 

and resentment ; but he could always respect a man who 
was a scholar, a poet, or a philosopher. Rogers, Lubrell, 
and Moore he learned to esteem ; Sydney Smith he 
respected in a distant, half-hearted way j Mackintosh was 
a favourite ; but Mr Thomas Flower Ellis, from similarity 
of character and compatibility of tastes, he loved above 
all others, and the friendship thus early formed survived 
to the last. As the years went by, London society grew 
to have for him less and less attraction ; and, in his later 
years, his former friends lamented his domesticated 
habits and secluded life. In the brilliant society into 
which he was drawn in his early parliamentary days, the 
future Historian of England moved a strange figure. 
Associating on terms of equality with wealthy aristocrats, 
he was yet a poor man j and while his fame was in all 
the clubs as a great parliamentary debater, he was selling 
the gold medals he had gained at the University to keep 
himself out of debt : having been a hero in some pro- 
longed party-fight, he would retire to his chambers to 
sup on bread and cheese and " a glass of the audit ale 
which reminded him he was still a fellow of Trinity." 

Macaulay's financial position was to him for some 
time a source of very great uneasiness. To discharge 
his duties in Parliament properly and without suspicion 
he saw how absolutely necessary it v/as he should be 
possessed of an independent income. He could not 
bear to be taunted as a place-hunter or a time-server; 
and it must be confessed, that his greatest enemies might 
have no reason to impute motives, he was often while in 
office unnecessarily opinionative and unbending, and not 
seldom too ready to put his resignation in the hands of 
ministers. Little as his income was at this time (1830-32) 
it was likely soon to be less. Lord Brougham could 
never brook a rival, and being nearly omnipotent in 



Macaulay. i55 

the Edinhurgh Review, he did what he could to ruin 
Macaulay's connection with the periodical. When the 
essay on Hallam was published he complained to Jeffrey, 
and when the first paper on Mill appeared " he foamed 
with rage." Matters came to a head when Macaulay, 
having agreed to write an article on the French Re- 
volution, had to abandon the idea because Brougham 
subsequently expressed his willingness to write on the 
subject. Macaulay was justly chagrined at the cool 
assumption of his rival, and wrote to Macvey Napier, 
now the editor, that his connection with the Review—^ 
connection which had been to him a source of pleasure 
and pride— must now terminate, seeing it had now be- 
come '' a source of humiliation and mortification." 
Napier was sufficient for the situation, and Macaulay 
was induced to reconsider his verdict. It is questionable, 
however, if the editor would have been so successful as 
he was, had all minor considerations of his contributor 
not been sunk in his great sorrow over the sudden and 
unexpected death of his sister Jane. This event not 
only gave Macaulay a great shock— for never a brother 
was more tenderly attached to sisters— but it was also 
the original cause of his mother's death in the year 
succeeding (1832). 

A further change in Macaulay's family affairs occurred 
about this time ; his sister Margaret was married to Mr 
John Cropper, a gentleman who belonged to the Society 
of Friends. Macaulay, who had taken a keen pleasure 
in the company of his sisters, and loved them with 
excessive fondness, felt these separations deeply. What- 
ever he had been in the world, he had always been a boy 
with them; but from the time of the marriage of his 
sister Margaret, a certain vivacity which characterized 
his domestic intercourse left him completely. He had 



156 Masters in History. 

never counted on the precariousness of sisterly affection, 
and a certain misery stole in about the springs of his life, 
bringing with it something of regret that he had never 
laid out for himself a larger scheme of existence. By 
and by the brooding left him, and he awakened to the 
better mind j but if much had been lost to him, still he 
was ready manfully to confess, "to repine against the 
nature of things, and against the great fundamental law 
of all society, because in consequence of my own want 
of foresight it happens to bear heavily on me, would be 
the basest and most absurd selfishness." Macaulay's 
life has no love story, unless what the tale of his affection 
for his sisters conveys. After Margaret he had still 
Hannah preserved to him; but let her be taken, and 
then nothing remained to him but his study and his 
books, and the gratification of a large and honourable 
ambition. 

On the 7th June 1832, the Reform Bill passed through 
Parliament. Its provisions had long been matter of 
eager debate, and the furtherance of the measure had 
been owing not a little to the eloquence of Macaulay. 
In acknowledgment of his exertions he was appointed 
one of the Commissioners of the Board of Control, 
"which represented the Crown in its relation to the 
East India Directors." In his letters to his sisters 
Macaulay shows again and again he could write and 
embody the substance of his news in verse as readily as 
in prose, and soon after this appointment, he was able to 
make the following satisfactory communication to his 
sister Hannah : — 

" Next Wednesday will be quarter-day ; 
And then, if Fm alive. 
Of sterling pound I shall receive 
Three hundred seventy-five. 



Macattlay. 157 

" Already I possess in cash. 
Two hundred twenty-four, 
Besides what I have lent to John, 
Which makes up twenty more. 

" Also the man who editeth 
The Yellow and the Blue 
Doth owe me ninety pounds at least 
All for my last review. 

" So if my debtors pay their debts, 
You'll find, dear sister, mine, 
That all my wealth together makes 
Seven hundred pounds and nine." 

At the general election, after the passing of the Reform 
Act, Macaulay was returned for Leeds; and in the 
August of 1833 he was able to communicate to his sister 
the news of his appointment to a place in the Supreme 
Council of India. In those days India had a worse 
name than it has now ; it was held in a kind of vague 
terror, and seemed much further away. The situation, 
however, was one which was attended with advantages 
which could by no means be lightly regarded. The 
emoluments of the office were such as to secure his 
return j and a permanent competency at the end of a 
very short period. The salary was ten thousand pounds 
a-year, and he expected to live on half that sum, and to 
be able to return to England at thirty-nine master of a 
fortune of thirty thousand. " I am not fond of money," 
said he, '' nor anxious about it ; but though every day 
makes me less and less eager for wealth, every day 
shows me more and more strongly how necessary a com- 
petency is to a man who desires to be either great or 
useful. At present the plain fact is, that I continue to 
•be a public man only while I can continue in office. If 
I left my place in Government, I must leave my seat in 



158 Masters in History, 

Parliament too. For I must live. I can live only by my 
pen; and it is absolutely impossible for any man to 
write enough to procure him a decent subsistence, and 
at the same time to take an active part in politics. I 
have not during this session been able to send a single 
line to the Edinburgh Review ; and, if I had been out of 
office, I should have been able to do very little. . . . 
Now, in order to live like a gentleman, it would be 
necessary for me to write, not as I have done hitherto, 
but regularly, and even daily. I have never made more 
than two hundred a-year by my pen. I could not sup- 
port myself in comfort on less than five hundred j and I 
shall in all probability have many others to support. 
The prospects of our family are, if possible, darker 
than ever." 

Apart from the articles already named, up to the 
beginning of 1834, he had written for the Review his 
essays on Johnson, Hamden, Bunyan, Byron, Robert 
Montgomery, Burleigh, and Pitt. Some of these articles 
it was thought Macaulay would never surpass, and his 
friends despaired of him ever doing anything better than 
Walpole ; they did not know he was yet to excel all his 
former performances. 

On the 15th February 1834 Macaulay left England, and 
on the loth June his vessel was anchored off Madras. On 
his arrival, he hastened to join Lord William Bentinck 
in the Neilgherries. In this beautiful Indian retreat, 
" where thickets of rhododendrons fill the glades and 
clothe the ridges," he spent two months. Of Indian 
scenery he gives us little or no description. In India, 
as in England, his heart was never in the country. He 
was a man of the town, and to all the sights and scenes 
of rural life he was wholly indifferent. He could excel 
in character and assembly painting, but he was a novice 



Macatday. 159 

in landscape. The senses of atmosphere and sunlight 
he hardly possessed. Of music he knew as little as 
Johnson ; and unless on one occasion, when he was able 
to identify The Campbells are Coinin\ he was never known 
to distinguish one tune from another. We are com- 
pletely in want, both in Macaulay's poetry and prose, of 
evidence that the contemplation of natural scenery ever 
filled him with a thrill of real delight. We have plenty 
of proof that his imagination was stimulated by his Indian 
sojourn, but it was the history, the worship, the great 
cities, the architectural splendours, and the millions of 
the population that acted on his ideal faculty ; and not 
by any means either the rolling rivers, the vast plains, or 
the towering mountains of our Eastern Empire. Tre- 
velyan says he was touched by the glories of the Indian 
forests. This may have been so j but for our part we have 
discovered little traces of any permanent impression. 

After two months stay in the hills he joined his sister 
Hannah at Calcutta, and they set up house for them- 
selves on a style even more handsome than that required 
of them. Not many months had gone of their Indian 
life when his sister married Mr Trevelyan. In their 
Calcutta house they lived altogether; but the joy of the 
weeks immediately succeeding the marriage was terribly 
damped by the news of Mrs Cropper's death. " There 
were not ten people in the world," said Macaulay at one 
time, " whose deaths would spoil my dinner ; but there 
are one or two whose deaths would break my heart." 
Of these " one or two " Margaret was one. In the pre- 
sence of the young married couple he bore up as best 
he could, and he tried to drown his sorrow " in floods of 
official work." He was afraid to leave his mind to its 
own thoughts, to pass an hour without something to do, 
a friend near him, or a book before him. 



i6o Masters in History. 

To the work of the Supreme Council, Macaulay ren- 
dered substantial aid, and he gave an impetus to educa- 
tion in India which still survives ; but amid many advan- 
tages, and in the enjoyment of even larger savings than 
he had anticipated, he was not long in casting longing 
thoughts to the West and the civilisation of England. 
But what to do with himself after he got back was as yet 
very far from clear. In a vague way the idea of his 
History was rising in his mind. To his friend Ellis he 
wrote : — " What my course of life will be when I return 
to England is very doubtful. But I am more than half 
determined to abandon politics and to give myself wholly 
to letters ; to undertake some great historical work which 
may be at once the business and the amusement of my 
life; and to leave the pleasures of pestiferous rooms, 
sleepless nights, aching heads, and diseased stomachs, to 
-Roebuck and to Praed. . . . For what is it that the 
politician submits, day after day, to see the morning break 
over the Thames, and then totters home, with bursting 
temples, to his bed ? Is it for fame ? Who would com- 
pare the fame of Charles Townshend to that of Hume, 
that of Lord North to that of Gibbon, that of Lord 
Chatham to that of Johnson ? Who can look back on 
the life of Burke, and not regret that the years which he 
passed in ruining his health and temper by political 
exertions were not passed in the composition of some 
great and durable work ? Who can read the letters of 
Atticus, and not feel that Cicero would have been an 
infinitely happier and better man, and a not less cele- 
brated man, if he had left us fewer speeches, and more 
Academic Questions and Tusculan Disputations ? if he 
had passed the time which he spent in brawling with 
Vatinius and Clodius in producing a History of Rome 
superior even to that of Livy ? But these are medita- 



Macaulay. 1 6 1 

tions in a quiet garden, situated far beyond the con- 
tagious influence of English faction. What I might feel 
if I again saw Downing Street and Palace Yard is 
another question. 

During his Indian exile, Macaulay kept himself before 
the English public by his articles on Mackintosh's 
" History of the Revolution " and " Lord Bac on." The 
latter was composed with great pains ; every sentence of 
the second portion of the paper was recast, and some of 
them repeatedly. It forms his most exhaustive essay. 
In this production the student marks that the writer 
has attained the excellency of literary power. There are 
many details, but nothing positively wearisome. Deep 
subjects are touched upon, but all is simple and clear. 
Nothing is left out, nothing forgotten, and the literary 
fabric is closely woven throughout. After reading the 
MS., Jeifrey said : " Since Lord Bacon himself, I do not 
know that there has been anything so fine." 

In the beginning of January 1838 Macaulay, along 
with the Trevelyans, set out for England, but they did 
not arrive in London until June. While the Lord 
Hu7igerford had been making a slow passage through 
the southern seas, Zachary Macaulay died, and was 
buried in Westminster. On a pedestal, bearing his bust, 
we have all the biography we will ever likely have of his 
devoted life. The inscription says he was a man who, 

DURING FORTY SUCCESSIVE YEARS, PARTAKING IN THE 
COUNSELS AND THE LABOURS WHICH, GUIDED BY FAVOUR- 
ING PROVIDENCE, RESCUED AFRICA FROM THE WOES, AND 
THE BRITISH EMPIRE FROM THE GUILT, OF SLAVERY AND 
THE SLAVE TRADE, MEEKLY ENDURED THE TOIL, THE 
PRIVATION, AND THE REPROACH, RESIGNING TO OTHERS 
THE PRAISE AND THE REWARD. 

Macaulay found his native land much as he had left 
(2.) L 



1 62 Masters in History. 

it, only Napier was more eager than ever for articles, and 
the wrath of Lord Brougham had risen to open fury. 
The idea of the history he had first cherished in India 
grew upon him so soon as he found himself amongst the 
libraries of London, and began to take a definite shape. 
We find him writing again to ElHs : " As soon as I 
return from Rome I shall seriously commence my history. 
The first part (which, I think, will take up five volumes), 
will extend from the Revolution to the commencement 
of Sir Robert Walpole's long administration — a period of 
three or four and thirty very eventful years. From the 
commencement of Walpole's administration to the com- 
mencement of the American war, events may be de- 
spatched more concisely. From the commencement of 
the American war it will again become copious. These, 
at least, are my present notions." 

The tour to Italy, referred to above, was an excursion 
from which he derived the utmost pleasure, and while 
he lingered at Florence his vanity was flattered by a 
letter from Lord Melbourne offering him the post of 
Judge Advocate, with an attached salary of ;£"2 5oo a 
year. The offer he declined. Nothing short of the 
Cabinet was now to satisfy his ambition. During his 
journey his spirit caught fire from the scenes of classical 
story, and in the course of his progress he seems to have 
composed a good deal of poetry, and sketched the outline 
of his Lays on the very ground where the deeds of valour 
they celebrate were done. We have already spoken of the 
musings of Gibbon and Grote amid the ruins of ancient 
Rome, but Macaulay's, on comparison, will be found to 
be very different from both. The decay of the Eternal 
City was to him a prophecy of the decay of the English 
Capital. " Yet to indulge in a sort of reflection, which 
I often fall into here, the day may come when London, 



Macaulay. 163 

then dwindled into the dimensions of the parish of St 
Martin's, and supported in its decay by the expenditure 
of wealthy Patagonians and New Zealanders, may have 
no more important questions to decide than the arrange- 
ment of ' Afflictions sore long time I bore ' on the grave- 
stone of the wife of some baker in Houndsditch." The 
thought of this sentence finds more elegant and elaborate 
expression in his essay on Von Ranke's " History of the 
Popes," and it will satisfy the curious to know that it is 
in this essay that the celebrated individual known by the 
name of Macaulay' s New Zealander is introduced : 
"The members of the Roman CathoHc Church are 
certainly not fewer than a hundred and fifty millions ; 
and it will be difficult to show that all the other Chris- 
tian sects united amount to a hundred and twenty 
millions. Nor do we see any sign which indicates that 
the term of her long dominion is approaching. She saw 
the commencement of all the governments and of all 
the ecclesiastical establishments that now exist in the 
world; and we feel no assurance that she is not destined 
to see the end of them all. She was great and respected 
before the Saxon had set foot in Britain, before the Frank 
had passed the Rhine, when Grecian eloquence still 
flourished in Antioch, when idols were still w^orshipped 
in the temple of Mecca. And she may still exist in 
undiminished vigour when some traveller from New 
Zealand shall, in the midst of a vast solitude, take his 
stand on a broken arch of London Bridge to sketch the 
ruins of St Paul's." In Rome he busied himself with 
other things than merely sight-seeing. He amused him- 
self with Lytton's novels, studied hard at Gibbon, 
elaborated Horatius, and " thought a good deal about 
his history," feeling what Gibbon felt, that one of the 
great difficulties was to get a good beginning. 



164 Masters in History. 

In the first week of February 1839, Macaulay was in 
London once more. The first thing he did was to buy 
Mr Gladstone's new book on the " Connection of Church 
and State," and on the April following he reviewed it in 
the Edinhurgh. He found no difficulty in showing the 
absurdity of many of Mr Gladstone's high Episcopalian 
notions, and he was not slow to vindicate the position of 
the Church of Scotland, which was, even thus early, an 
object of Mr Gladstone's aversion. When we remember 
that Gladstone was at this time a Tory of the Tories we 
cannot but commend the uniform courtesy of the Whig 
Reviewer. In such a paper we are tempted to look for 
some expression of Macaulay' s own religious views, but 
as the article judges the EstabHshments both north and 
south of the Tweed in a strictly utilitarian spirit, we seek 
in vain. The " Shepherd " said " Macaulay can hae nae 
principle — that's flat," * but it may have been that his 
convictions were not the less deep that he made of them 
no particular parade. On the hustings, at Leeds, he 
repudiated certain drawing questions with something like 
moral indignation, and no further would he go than to 
say, ^'I am a Christian." And, when time and place 
are considered, few are there but will say, in going so 
far, he had gone far enough to satisfy the requirements 
of a legitimate curiosity. In purely literary and political 
matters Macaulay used the naked blade, but in all his 
writings bearing on religious topics, he never allowed 
the button to come off the foil. 

About this time Abercromby, the Speaker of the 
House, was elevated to the peerage. This promotion 
leaving Edinburgh vacant, Macaulay sat in his place. 
His first speech in the House was in support of Grote's 
motion on the Ballot. The speech showed the Indian 
* "Noctes Ambrosianae, " Vol. ii., p. 364. 



Macaulay. 165 

Councillor possessed all his old fire, and very soon he 
was made War Minister. Not long did he occupy his 
post. On the matter of the Corn Laws, raised in the 
House by Lord John Russell, Parliament was dissolved 
in the June of 1841, and the Conservatives succeeded to 
power. Amid the many Whigs thrown out by the elec- 
tion Macaulay retained his seat for Edinburgh. The 
change of Government never cost him a regret. His 
loss was only his official income, and his gain was a 
leisure which was far more valued. 

Macaulay now took up his residence in the Albany, 
"that luxurious cloister, whose inviolable tranquillity 
affords so agreeable a relief from the roar and flood of 
the Piccadilly traffic." While in office he wrote his 
essays on " Sir William Temple " and Ranke's " History 
of the Popes," and also his famous paper on "Lord Clive." 
Of all Macaulay's essays that on Clive has taken the 
■ead in popularity. As a separate production it sells 
twice as well as " Chatham," thrice as well as "Addison," 
and five times as well as " Byron." The only other 
essay which has divided with it the palm of popularity, 
is that on "Warren Hastings." It would have been 
strange had it been otherwise ; the two papers are com- 
panion productions. The style of both is rapid and 
impetuous, unequalled by anything of the kind in our 
language. On the two proconsuls Carlyle could have 
done nothing better. While the transitions are rapid, 
and the groupings gorgeous, their language is dyed in 
the richest hues of the East, and their literature is heavy 
with gems like the jewelled tapestry of a Nabob. As we 
read, the forward flowing tide of time seems to flow back 
with us, and we dream again of the golden prime of 
Haroun Alraschid, and the days when 

" Down the Tigris we were borne 
By Bagdat's shrines of fretted gold." 



1 66 Masters in History. 

As we read, we seem to live in the hot haze of an Indian 
day; strange populations move before us, and strange 
buildings of marble are shining in the rich sunlight. The 
primary aim of these papers is neither argument nor 
information. Their effect is the effect of a poem ; they 
appeal to the imagination, and they carry it captive. 

"Warren Hastings" was the first product of our 
author's Albany life, and the following, from the paper 
bearing that title, may be taken as a fair specimen of his 
powers as an assembly painter : — "In the meantime the 
preparations for the trial had proceeded rapidly, and on 
the 13th February 1788 the sittings of the Court com- 
menced. There have been spectacles more dazzling 
to the eye, more gorgeous with jewellery and cloth of 
gold, more attractive to grown-up children, than that 
which was then exhibited at Westminster \ but perhaps 
there never was a spectacle so well calculated to strike a 
highly-cultivated, a reflective, an imaginative mind. All 
the various kinds of interest which belong to the near 
and to the distant, to the present and to the past, were 
collected on one spot, and in one hour. All the talents 
and all the accomplishments which are developed by 
liberty and civilisation were now displayed with every 
advantage that could be derived both from co-operation 
and from contrast. Every step in the proceedings 
carried the mind either backward, through many troubled 
centuries, to the days when the foundations of our con- 
stitution were laid ; or far away, over boundless seas and 
deserts, to dusky nations living under strange stars, wor- 
shipping strange gods, and writing strange characters 
from right to left. The High Court of Parliament was to 
sit, according to forms handed down from the days of 
the Plantagenets, on an Englishman accused of exercis- 
ing tyranny over the lord^of the holy city of Benares, and 



Macmtlay. 167 

over the ladies of the princely house of Oude. The 
place was worthy of such a trial. It was the great hall 
of William Rufus, the hall which had resounded with 
acclamations at the inauguration of thirty kings, the hall 
which had witnessed the just sentence of Bacon, and the 
just absolution of Somers ; the hall where the eloquence 
of Strafford had, for a moment, awed and melted a 
victorious party, inflamed by just resentment; the hall 
where Charles had confronted the High Court of 
Justice with the placid courage which has half redeemed 
his fame. Neither military nor civil pomp was wanting. 
The avenues were lined with grenadiers. The streets 
were kept clear by cavalry. The peers, robed in gold 
and ermine, were marshalled by the heralds under 
Garter King-at-Arms. The judges, in their vest- 
ments of State, attended to give advice on points of law. 
Near a hundred and seventy lords, three-fourths of the 
Upper House, as the Upper House then was, walked in 
solemn order from their usual place of assembling to the 
tribunal. The junior baron present led the way, George 
EHott (Lord Heathfield), recently ennobled for his 
memorable defence of Gibraltar against the fleets and 
armies of France and Spain. The long procession was 
closed by the Duke of Norfolk, Earl Marshal of the 
Realm, by the great dignitaries, and by the brothers and 
sons of the King. Last of all came the Prince of Wales, 
conspicuous by his fine person and noble bearing. The 
grey old walls were hung with scarlet. The long 
galleries w^ere crowded by an audience such as has rarely 
excited the fears or the emulation of an orator. There 
were gathered together, from all parts of a great, free, 
enlightened, and prosperous empire, grace and female 
loveliness, wit and learning, the representatives of every 
science and of every art. There were seated round the 



1 68 Masters in History. 

Queen the fair-haired young daughters of the house of 
Brunswick. There the ambassadors of great kings and 
commonwealths gazed with admiration on a spectacle 
which no other country in the world could present. 
There Siddons, in the prime of her majestic beauty, 
looked with emotion on a scene surpassing all the imita- 
tions of the stage. There the historian of the Roman 
Empire thought of the days when Cicero pleaded the 
cause of Sicily against Verres ; and when before a senate, 
which still retained some show of freedom, Tacitus 
thundered against the oppressor of Africa. There were 
seen side by side the greatest painter and the greatest 
scholar of the age. The spectacle had allured Reynolds 
from that easel which has preserved to us the thoughtful 
foreheads of so many writers and statesmen, and the 
sweet smiles of so many noble matrons. It had induced 
Parr to suspend his labours in that dark and profound 
mind from which he had extracted a vast treasure of 
erudition — a treasure too often buried in the earth, too 
often paraded with injudicious and inelegant ostentation, 
but still precious, massive, and splendid. There 
appeared the voluptuous charms of her to whom the heir 
of the throne had, in secret, plighted his faith. There 
too was she, the beautiful mother of a beautiful race, the 
Saint Cecilia, whose delicate features, lighted up by love 
and music, art has rescued from common decay. There 
were the members of that brilliant society which quoted, 
criticised, and exchanged repartees, under the rich pea- 
cock-hangings of Mrs Montague. And there the ladies, 
whose lips, more persuasive than those of Fox himself, 
had carried the Westminster election against palace and 
treasury, shone round Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire." 
The article on Hastings was soon followed by another 
on Frederick the Great, and Macaulay was, for a time. 



Macaulay. 169 

the more anxious to pursue these casual studies as he 
felt they benefited his historical researches, and helped 
him to grasp the ramifying life of his own country. 
He laid his account, when he thus commenced his 
history in the quiet of the Albany, to do everything 
patiently and thoroughly. As with his essays, he made 
up his mind to have no rough edges to his work, and no 
stitches dropped. The canvass was to be full, but there 
was to be no crowding ; the research was to be deep, but 
the style was not to be burdened; the subject was to be 
great, but the book was to be readable ; the scenes of 
the great events of British history were many and far 
away, but every one of them was to be visited; nothing 
was to be left out, nothing forgotten, and nothing feebly 
handled. He was to lead the English people over their 
past life as through a terra incognita, and he was not to be 
satisfied unless he produced something which should for 
a few days supersede the last fashionable novel on the 
tables of young ladies. He was not to found his preten- 
sions to the rank of a classic on his reviews, but if he 
lived twelve or fifteen years he might perhaps produce 
something which he would not be afraid to exhibit side 
by side with the performances of the old masters. 

The year which saw the History of England begun 
also saw the publication of the " Lays of Ancient Rome." 
There is no need to make any remark on a book, the 
substance of which is in the memory of every school-boy, 
and a hundred and fifty thousand copies of which, or 
nearly so, are in the hands of the people. Professor 
Wilson wiped off old scores by giving it a hearty welcome 
in " Blackwood." Christopher was delighted to find that 
the burnished fly, which twenty years ago, in the pride of 
May, bounced through the window of "Knight's 
Quarterly," had assumed the plume of the eagle, and was 



170 Masters in History, 



1 



now capable of looking on the sun. In verse, Wilson was 
himself the most placid of poets, but we cannot help 
thinking the cut-and-thrust style of the Lays must have 
stirred his fiery spirit. We may conceive how the great 
athletic frame shook and the broad chest heaved as he 
shouldered his crutch, and, assuming for the nonce the 
character of Horatius, showed the bewildered Hogg — 
" How valiantly he kept the bridge 
In the brave days of old." 
"The young poets weave dreams," says North, "with 
shadows transitory as clouds without substance j Macaulay 
builds realities lasting as rocks. The young poets steal 
from all and sundry, and deny their thefts ; he robs in 
the face of day. Whom? Homer." This praise was 
sweet to the Albany student. "I should really be 
obliged to you," said Macaulay to Napier, " if, when you 
have an opportunity, you will let Professor Wilson know 
that his conduct has affected me as generous conduct 
affects men not ungenerous." 

In 1843 he pubHshed, much against his will, an 
edition of his collected essays. The publication was 
rendered necessary by the appearance in England of 
pirated American editions, which contained, as the pro- 
duct of his pen, an amount of trash, the circulation of 
which would have been hurtful to his reputation. The 
work had an enormous sale, but he felt bound to confess 
that few of the articles could be read with satisfaction. 
The acknowledgment is strange, considering how re- 
solutely he stuck to his written opinions ; and it is only 
explicable on the ground that its sole reference is to the 
literary form of his articles. It forms a strange feature 
in the character of Macaulay that he was so certain 
everything he said was absolutely true, and so far from 
certain that what he said had been said in the best 



Macattlay. 1 7 1 

manner. What he felt after the pubUcation of his essays, 
he felt also after the publication of his history. Of the 
latter work he said, "When I compare my book with 
what I imagine history ought to be, I feel dejected and 
ashamed." The reference of these words is by no means 
to the subject-matter of history, but to its style and 
literary colouring. The facts he dealt with he always 
assumed to be exactly as he gave them, and seldom 
indeed did he ever submit himself either to retract or 
correct anything referring primarily to matter of fact. 
The mistake might be apparent enough, but he never 
saw any need of altering it ; and we may conceive all 
alteration was particularly painful that involved the dis- 
turbance of the flowing narrative. The following is 
characteristic : — " To-day, I got a letter from , point- 
ing out what I must admit to be a gross impropriety of 
language in my book; an impropriety of a sort rare, I 
hope, with me. It shall be corrected, and I am obliged 
to the fellow, little as I like him." 

Henceforward writing for the Review was to be for him 
a secondary consideration. He was advancing with his 
history, and he was beginning to find it would by and by 
absorb his whole attention. He was not a man who 
could keep two or three irons in the fire at one time. 
Southey could work in such a manner, but not Macaulay. 
The bent of his mind was such that it could not jump 
from one subject to another. Anything he wished to do 
well, needed to be the only subject of his study for the 
time being. If he was to go on turning from one work 
to another, he confessed he would lose time ; and having 
had some experiences of the evils of procrastination, and 
of having done nothing by attempting to do too much, 
he determined '^he would no more go on dawdling and 
reproaching himself all his life." 



172 Masters in History. 



I 



After the dissolution in 1843, Macaulay took a short 
tour through Holland, and after paying the penalty of 
greatness by being worried in the steamers and pestered 
at the hotels, he was soon back again to his quiet cham- 
bers in the Albany, to complete his paper on Chatham, 
which had given him a gi-eat deal of trouble, and 
which was primarily intended to be a paper on the life 
and times of Burke. After the publication of this paper 
a rumour went through the country that Macaulay had 
discontinued writing for the Review. Macaulay denied 
having set the rumour afloat, but all the same, the above- 
mentioned article was the last he was to contribute to its 
pages. Between parliamentary^business on the one hand, 
and his history on the other, all idea of magazine writing 
was wholly out of the question ; indeed, when a great 
debate was looming in the distance, it was with difficulty 
he could go on even with his historical work. " When 
an approaching debate," he confessed, " is in my head, it 
is to no purpose I sit down at my desk to write history, 
and I soon get up again in disgust" 

In 1846, when the Corn Law Bill had passed the Peers, 
Lord John Russell was again commanded to form a 
cabinet, and Macaulay was appointed Paymaster-General 
of the Army. This necessitated his going down to Scot- 
land to seek re-election. On account of the bold position 
he had taken up on the Maynooth Grant, he was opposed 
by the dissenters. The last sentence of his speech in 
support of the grant are memorable. " Yes, Sir, to this 
bill, and to every bill which shall seem to me likely to 
promote the real Union of Great Britain and Ireland, I 
will give my support, regardless of obloquy, regardless of 
the risk which I may run of losing my seat in Parlia- 
ment." The member brought forward by the dissenters 
was Sir Culling Eardley Smith ; but although the fight was 



I 



Macaulay, i73 

smart, Macaulay returned in triumph to the Albany. In 
Parliament he now spoke much seldomer than usual; 
only five times did he open his mouth in the sessions 
1846 and 1847. On one of these occasions it was to 
defend the principle of the Factory Acts. As a public 
speaker his voice had httle modulation, and he indulged 
in no gesticulation whatever, except now and again mak- 
ing a half-turn on his heel ; but the following may be 
taken as a specimen of that forcible rhetoric which called 
forth Disraeli's admiration in " The Young Duke," and 
his flattering remark in the House that it was always so 
agreeable to listen to the Right Honourable gentleman, 
that they always rejoiced in the circumstances, whatever 
they were, which induced him to speak -^ " Man, man is 
the great instrument that produces wealth. The natural 
difference between Campania and Spitzbergen is trifling 
when compared with the difference between a country 
inhabited by men full of bodily and mental vigour, and a 
country inhabited by men sunk in bodily and mental de- 
crepitude. Therefore it is that we are not poorer but 
richer, because we have, through many ages, rested from 
our labour one day in seven. That day is not lost. 
While industry is suspended, while the plough Hes in the 
furrow, while the Exchange is silent, while no smoke 
ascends from the factory, a process is going on quite as 
important to the wealth of nations as any process which 
is performed on more busy days. Man, the machine of 
machines, the machine compared with which all the con- 
trivances of the Watts and the Arkwrights are worthless, 
is repairing and winding-up, so that he returns to his 
labours on the Monday with clearer intellect, with livelier 
spirits, with renewed corporal vigour. Never will I be- 
lieve that what makes a population stronger and healthier, 
* "The Young Duke," book v., chap. vi. 



1 74 Masters in Histo7y. 

and wiser, and better, can ultimately make it poorei. 
You try to frighten us by telling us that, in some German 
factories, the young work seventeen hours in the twenty- 
four; that they work so hard that among thousands there 
is not one who grows to such a stature that he can be 
admitted to the army ; and you ask whether, if this bill 
pass, we can possibly hold our own against such compe- 
tition as this. Sir, I laugh at the thought of such compe- 
tition. If ever we are forced to yield the foremost place 
amongst commercial nations, we shall yield it, not to a 
race of degenerate dwarfs, but to some people pre- 
eminently vigorous in body and mind." 

Of all men Macaulay was a man singularly free from 
vices. No man ever went through the heat of an election 
and had less laid to his charge. His character was 
simple, and guileless, and generous. He was one of 
those human beings, so seldom to be met with, that are 
most loved by those who know them best. Of the low 
games of intrigue and double dealing he knew nothing. 
He had his temper, but it seldom got the better of him. 
He had his passions, but, so far as known, they never 
overcame him. He knew the value of money, but he 
was the most open-handed of men. In all his ways he 
walked with singular straightness, and his mind was ever 
transparent as the purest crystal. It is not too much to 
say that it was the honesty and genuineness of the man 
which cost him his seat for Edinburgh in 1847. There 
were four candidates in the field — Cowan, Craig, Macaulay, 
and Blackburn ; and, speaking at the time, Hugh Miller 
said : " The struggle is exciting the deepest interest, and, 
as the beginning of a decided movement on the part of 
Christians of various denominations to send men of 
avowed Christian principles to Parliament, may lead to 
great results." The great result was the rejection of 
Macaulay, a consummation of which, ere many days 



Macatday. 1 75 

had passed, the electors of Edinburgh were more than 
ashamed. In the turn of popular feeling, it has to be 
mentioned to the credit of the Scotsman^ that it ceased not 
to vindicate the cause of the Historian, and Macaulay, 
thankful for its steady support, conveyed his gratitude to 
the Editor. 

The years of retirement he spent after his defeat at 
Edinburgh were possibly the most enjoyed of all the 
years of his life. He was away from the wrangle of 
Parliament and the misery of coming debates j he was 
comfortable in his circumstances, respected amongst his 
friends, and every day doing that amount of hard brain 
work which gave zest to his simple pleasures. He never 
loved animals, and had a special aversion to dogs ; but 
children were his delight. He never wearied playing 
with them \ and that no game might be hindered on his 
account, he was ever ready to act the part of robber, 
tiger, or donkey. 

Macaulay well knew, however, the essential difference 
between work and play. His diligence was at least 
equal to that of Gibbon, and his research possibly sur- 
passed that of Grote. It was true what Thackeray said 
of him : " He reads twenty books to write a sentence ; he 
travels a hundred miles to make a line of description." 
He possessed that genuine historical spirit which approxi- 
mates to a moral consciousness. It would have been 
impossible for him to have described Marathon as Grote 
described it, or written of Constantinople as Gibbon 
wrote of it. Rest he could not, until he had seen with 
his own eyes and gone over on his own feet the im- 
portant places and battle-fields of his narrative. For this 
purpose, Holland, Belgium, Scotland, Ireland, and France 
were all visited by the indefatigable historian. The 
notes he made during his tour in Ireland were as long 
and elaborate as his article on Bacon. He visited 



1 76 Masters in History. 

Killiecrankie that he might walk up the road which 
runs by the Garry, and so estimate the time the Eng- 
lish army took to defile through the pass. He made 
a journey from London to Glencoe that he might write 
little more than a dozen sentences. We leave it to the 
reader to pronounce whether the little bit of narrative is 
commensurate with the enormous pains : " Mac lan"^ 
dwelt in the mouth of a ravine situated not far from the 
southern shore of Lochleven, an arm of the sea which 
deeply indents the western coast of Scotland, and sepa- 
rates Argyleshire from Inverness-shire. Near his house 
were two or three small hamlets inhabited by his tribe. 
The whole population which he governed was not sup- 
posed to exceed two hundred souls. In the neighbour- 
hood of the little cluster of villages was some copsewood 
and some pasture land j but a little further up the defile 
no sign of population or of fruitfulness was to be seen. 
In the Gaelic tongue, Glencoe signifies the Glen of 
Weeping ; and in truth that pass is the most dreary and 
melancholy of all the Scottish passes, the very Valley of 
the Shadow of Death. Mists and storms brood over it 
through the greatest part of the finest summer ; and even 
on these rare days, when the sun is bright and when there 
is no cloud in the sky, the impression made by the land- 
scape is sad and awful. Huge precipices of naked 
stone frown on both sides. Even in July the streaks of 
snow may often be discerned in the rifts near the sum- 
mits. All down the sides of the crags heaps of ruin 
mark the headlong path of the torrents. Mile after mile 
the traveller looks in vain for the smoke of one hut, or 
for one human form wrapped in a plaid, and listens in 
vain for the bark of a shepherd's dog or the bleat of a 
lamb. Mile after mile the only sound that indicates life 
* " History of England," chap, xviii. 



Macmday. 177 

is the faint cry of a bird of prey from some storm-beaten 
pinnacle of rock. The progress of civilisation, which 
has turned so many wastes into fields yellow with 
harvests or gay with apple blossoms, has only made 
Glencoe more desolate. All the science and industry of 
a peaceful age can extract nothing valuable from that 
wilderness \ but in an age of violence and rapine, the 
wilderness itself was valued on account of the shelter 
which it afforded to the plunderer and his plunder." 

A man who took a journey of four hundred miles to 
write a few sentences was not likely to be careless about 
any part of his work. A man who would read a 
thousand pamphlets to find a single grain of truth was 
not likely to be indifferent to his method of setting it 
forth. The composition of Macaulay is consequently 
characterised by unparalleled accuracy. His English is 
undefiled. His sentences flow like water over a mossy 
bed. Sometimes we have to read twice before the ear 
catches the fine cadence of the language, but we never 
need to read twice to grasp the sense j his meaning is 
always as transparent as the water of a mountain spring. 
They will turn over the pages of Macaulay in vain who 
are searchers for anything either tumid or diffuse. He 
wrote from a copious mind, but with a fine command of 
himself The river flows brimming full, but it never 
overflows its banks. His method of composition was 
so severe that it repressed every vagary, and was fatal 
to all excrescences whatsoever. First, he laboriously 
gathered together his materials, laying the most untoward 
subjects under tribute, and finding in the most out of the 
way comers here a little and there a little ; then when he 
had the subject fully in his head, and all the materials were 
melted into a glowing mass in his brain, he opened the 
gates and let the stream pour from his fast-moving pen. 
(-•) M 



1 78 Masters in History. 

But this was not all. Next morning he rewrote the work 
of the previous day, purifying, refining, elaborating, and 
polishing as he went along, till every clause was a unity, 
and every paragraph a literary cosmos. He was pains- 
taking almost to fastidiousness. He would rewrite a 
paragraph for the sake of giving some obdurate sentence 
a facile turn, and his taste had to be satisfied in matters 
of punctuation as well as in refinements of style. And 
last of all, like some completed viaduct that is tested by 
some enormous weight greater than ever it will have to 
bear when it is given over for common traffic, Macaulay 
read his finished productions aloud to a select circle of 
friends, before they were finally handed to the printer, 
and thus given forth to the world. The style of the 
historian is cultivated, but by no means elaborate. It 
occupies a place midway between the styles of Gibbon 
and Grote ; it is not so ambitious as that of the one, nor 
so simple as that of the other. Its chief instrument 
is the antithesis, and there are few sentences in all 
Macaulay's writings without the figure either delicately 
concealed or openly apparent. Measured and artificial 
as it is, it is yet so stamped with the individuality of the 
author that it can never be successfully copied. In his 
lifetime Macaulay chastened it, but he never changed it. 
It is his own \ and the style of " Milton " is the style of the 
twenty-fifth chapter of the " History of England." No 
author has ever adopted or imitated it. The mould 
nature only allowed one to use, and when he was done 
with it she broke it and threw it away. When we think 
of his continued carefulness and the high ideal of literary 
perfection he set before himself, we are prepared for the 
following quotation from his diary : — " I am afraid of 
saying to other people how much I miss in historians 
who pass for good. The truth is, that I admire no his- 



Macaulay. 1 79 

torians much except Herodotus, Thucydides, and Tacitus. 
Perhaps, in his way — a very pecuHar way — I might add 
Fra Paolo. The modern writers who have most of the 
great quaHties of the ancient masters of history are some 
memoir writers ; St Simon for example. There is merit, 
no doubt, in Hume, Robertson, Voltaire, and Gibbon. 
Yet it is not the thing. I have a conception of history 
more just, I am confident, than theirs. The execution is 
another matter. But I hope to improve." 

In the summer of 1848 the first volumes were in the 
hands of Mr Longman, the publisher. The author was 
fearful and troubled about the success of his work, but 
there were not wanting curious signs that the world was 
looking forward to its publication with something like 
feverish anxiety. He received two letters from America ; 
"one from a Mr Crump, offering him 500 dollars if he 
would introduce the name of Crump into his history ; 
another from a Young Men's Philosophical Society in 
New York, beginning, ' Possibly our fame has not 
pinioned the Atlantic' " Whatever the fortune of his 
history, Macaulay, like Gibbon, says he made up his 
mind to possess his soul with a philosophical calm. 
When, however, in the beginning of November, the work 
was given to the world, all fears were completely set at 
rest. It was welcomed with praise and satisfaction on 
all hands. Recognizing the genius of the work, partizans 
forgot their party, and paltry and contemptible spites 
were neglected and sunk in a thoroughly English recog- 

tnition of ability. Before the first week in December, the 
first edition of 3000 was all sold, and before the middle 
of the same month, another edition of a similar size had 
■^ found its way to the market. And this sudden success 

Lwas, in reality, only the foretaste of a greater popularity. 
--— — -- 



t8o Masters in History. 

midst of the greatest triumphs it creates for itself 
imaginary fears ; and while his history was selling as no 
history has ever sold before or since, Macaulay was 
troubled about a conceivable reaction that was sure to 
follow the first burst of applause. In December 4, 1848, 
we find the following remarkable entry in his diary : " I 
have felt to-day somewhat anxious about the fate of my 
book. The sale has surpassed expectation; but that 
proves only that people have formed a high idea of what 
they are to have. The disappointment, if there is dis- 
appointment, will be great. All that I hear is laudatory. 
But who can trust to praise that is poured into his own 
ear ? At all events, I have aimed high. I have tried to 
do something that may be remembered ; I have had the 
year 2000, and even 3000^ often in my mind; I have 
sacrificed nothing to temporary fashions of thought and 
style \ and, if I fail, my failure will be more honourable 
than nine-tenths of the success I have witnessed." In 
six months thirteen thousand copies were taken up. 

The popularity of Macaulay's works has been the 
despair of the most conscientious critics. That he made 
many mistakes is beyond all doubt, but to get the popular 
mind to mark them has been the most hopeless of tasks. 
A few students and scholars here and there are conversant 
with his errors, but that is all. The article of the critic 
lives for a day, but the error he combats survives. Here 
is a case where the critic is over-matched and over- 
weighted, and where his art is vain. For all the justice 
of the critics' remarks, as Mr Gladstone says,* " the 
error still sparkles in its diamond setting, circulates by 
thousands and tens of thousands among flocks of readers 
ever new and ever charmed, and has become part of the 
household stock of every family." Of his popularity 
* "Gleanings of Past Years," Vol. ii., p. 335. 



Macatday. 1 8 1 

Thackeray told one of his piquant stories. Walking in 
the Zoological Gardens, the novelist saw two pretty dam- 
sels making their way to see the hippopotamus. They 
had just paid their shilling to see the new addition to 
the collection, when he saw some one pointing out to 
them the historian in the distance. ' Mr Macaulay ! ' 
cried the lovely pair. ' Is that Mr Macaulay ? Then 
never mind the hippopotamus.' It was no matter they 
had paid their shilling, they turned away from Behemoth 
to view the author of the new ' History of England.' 
Thackeray would swear to Macaulay it was the proudest 
event in his life, and there is nothing to show the his- 
torian was not of the same opinion as the novelist. 
Macaulay ever esteemed as sincere the praise of the vulgar. 
On one occasion, when helping the historian to horse, an 
Irish groom praised his fine seat and manly appearance 
in the saddle, and the flattery, although doubtless with- 
out a single rag of sincerity, put him in a better humour 
than all the compliments paid him about his history ! 

In February 1848 Macaulay began the second part of 
his history, and in the November of the same year he 
was elected Lord Rector of Glasgow. All public appear- 
ances were now getting distasteful to him. Having made 
his way in the world, he was as unwilling to make " public 
speeches as any timid stammerer in Great Britain." " I 
was vexed," he confessed, " to hear that there is some 
thought of giving me the freedom of Glasgow in a gold box." 
His fears were vain. He took the oath, signed his name, 
gave his address, and "the acclamations were prodigious." 

Macaulay was now working harder than ever at his 
history; he had begun to love it more than his life. 
There are traces, that instead of mastering his work, his 
work was really mastering him. These traces, however, 
are few ; we cannot conclude that, Actaeon-like, he ever 



1 82 Masters in History. 

came to be hunted by his own hounds. His diary he 
kept regularly, and it is full of comments on men and 
books. " Strange fellow !" he says of Brougham. "His 
powers gone, his spite immortal. A dead nettle." The 
following is charitable about Byron : " Poor fellow ! yet 
he was a bad fellow, and horribly affected. But, then, 
what that could spoil, a character, was wanting? Had I 
at twenty-four had a peerage, and been the most popular 
poet, and the most successful Lovelace of the day, I 
should have been as great a coxcomb, and possibly as 
bad a man. I passed some hours over ' Don Juan,' and 
saw no reason to change the opinion which I formed 
twenty-five years ago. The first two cantos are Byron's 
masterpiece." Of the death of Jeffrey : " He saw through 
and through you. He marked every fault of taste, every 
weakness, every ridicule ; and yet he loved you as if he 
had been the dullest fellow in England. He had a much 
better heart than Sydney Smith. I do not mean that 
Sydney was in that respect below par. In ability, I should 
say, Jeffrey was higher, but Sydney rarer. I would rather 
have been Jeffrey -, but there will be several Jeffreys be- 
fore there is a Sydney. After all, dear Jeffrey's death is 
hardly matter for mourning. God grant that I may die 
so ! Full of years ; full of honours ; faculties bright and 
affections warm to the last \ lamented by the public and 
many valued friends. This is the euthanasia." 

In 1850, Henry Hallam, the friend of Macaulay, as 
well as of Tennyson, was gathered to his rest. During 
those years in which his acquaintances were dropping out 
of sight, he was still staying in his chambers in the Al- 
bany. These chambers were all library, and contained 
about 10,000 volumes, besides novels. Of the latter, he 
must in the course of his life have read many thousands. 
His study was not merely, however, his chambers. All 



Macatday. 183 

his life he had the inveterate habit of reading in^? the 
streets. How he was never run over, how he never got 
into scrapes by knocking up against people, is marvellous. 
Anything further than occasionally an exchange of plea- 
santries, in which the historian was not usually put at a 
disadvantage, his foible never cost him. The follow- 
ing was to his friend EUis : — " The other day I was 
overtaken by a hearse as I was strolling along, and read- 
ing the night expedition of Diomede and Ulysses. 
' Would you like a ride, sir ? ' said the driver. ' Plenty 
of room.' I could not help laughing. ' I daresay I shall 
want such a carriage some day or other ; but I am not 
ready yet.' The fellow, with the most consummate pro- 
fessional gravity, answered, ' I meant, sir, that there 
was plenty of room on the box.' " 

By the time Parliament was dissolved in 1852, the 
people of Edinburgh had thought better of their conduct 
to Macaulay at the former election. The historian made 
no concession whatever. The principles which had 
guided the first days of his poHtical life were the prin- 
ciples that guided him still. The position he occupied 
then was the position he occupied now. He was aware 
that opinions on many things had changed, and he was 
not altogether sure that he stood en rapport with the 
people; but his opinions had not changed, and as he 
was, the Edinburgh people must either take him or want 
him. " You call me a Liberal," he said, " but I don't 
know that in these days I deserve the name. I am 
opposed to the abolition of standing armies. I am 
opposed to the abrogation of capital punishment. I am 
opposed to the destruction of the National Church. In 
short, I am in favour of war, hanging, and Church Estab- 
lishments." The upshot of all was that he was returned 
at the top of the poll. Professor Wilson was not the 



184 Masters in History. 

man to play false to his party, but he knew that excep- 
tional circumstances demanded exceptional measures, 
and to his credit he voted for the historian. 

Some days after the Edinburgh election a very serious 
change came over the state of Macaulay's health. He 
was often incapable of vigorous exertion ; the idea of his 
historical task lay on him like a weight ; he found him- 
self at times as if under a spell of laziness, and the action 
of the heart was weak and irregular. He said, " I am 
vexed with myself for having suffered myself to be en- 
ticed back to public life. My book seems to me certain 
to be a failure." The truth is, from the time of the elec- 
tion he never was again the man he used to be. The 
July of 1853 was a crisis in his life. " He became 
twenty years older in a week, and a mile was more to 
him than ten miles a year before." 

Although Macaulay had been enticed back to Parlia- 
ment, he could not be enticed into office. He had been 
twice a Cabinet Minister, and never made a farthing 
thereby ; " but during the four years he had been out of 
office he had added ten thousand pounds to his capital." 
His most cogent argument against place was not, how- 
ever, a monetary one, but the state of his bodily health. 
Although not in the Cabinet, he yet rendered invaluable 
service to his party, and his speeches helped greatly to 
further the cause of Competitive Examination, then being 
debated in Parliament. On this subject Macaulay took 
up a correct and uncompromising position. " It seems 
to me," he said, " that there never was a fact proved by 
a larger mass of evidence, or a more unvaried experience 
than this — that men, who distinguish themselves in their 
youth above their contemporaries, almost always keep to 
the end of their lives the start which they have gained. 
This experience is so vast, that I should as soon expect 



Macaulay. 185 

to hear any one question it, as to hear it denied, that 
arsenic is poison, or that brandy is intoxicating. Take 
down in any library the Cambridge Calendar. There 
you have the list of honours for a hundred years. Look 
at the list of wranglers and of junior optimes, and I will 
venture to say that for one man who has in after life dis- 
tinguished himself among the junior optimes, you will 
find twenty among the wranglers. Take the Oxford 
Calendar, and compare the list of first-class men with an 
equal number of men in the third class. Is not our 
history full of instances which prove this fact ? Look at 
the Church or the Bar. Look at Parliament, from the 
time that Parliamentary Government began in this 
country — from the days of Montague and St John to 
those of Canning and Peel. Look to India. The ablest 
man who ever governed India was Warren Hastings, 
and was he not in the first rank at Westminster ? The 
ablest civil servant I ever knew in India was Sir Charles 
Metcalfe, and was he not of the first standing at Eton ? 
The most eminent member of the aristocracy who ever 
governed India was Lord Wellesley. What was his Eton 
reputation? what was his Oxford reputation? I must 
also mention — I cannot refrain from mentioning — another 
noble and distinguished Governor-General. A few days 
ago, while the memory of the speech to which I have 
alluded was still fresh in my mind, I read in the Musce 
Cantahrigienses a very eloquent and classical ode by a 
young poet of seventeen, which the University of Cam- 
bridge rewarded with a gold medal \ and with pleasure, 
not altogether unmingled with pain, I read at the bottom 
of that composition the name of the Honourable Edward 
Law, of St John's College." 

From the time of the publication of his speeches in 
1853 on to the pubHcation of the third and fourth 



1 86 Masters in History. 

volumes, Macaulay devoted himself almost exclusively 
to his history. Leisure, and letter-writing, and society, 
and eventually his diary, he all gave up, that nothing by 
either absorbing his time or distracting his attention 
might keep him from getting on with his work. On the 
2 1 St November 1855 the second instalment was com- 
pleted j and on a scale perfectly unprecedented in book- 
selling annals Longman arranged for the publication of 
this continuation of the " History of England." The 
first edition he took from the press contained the 
immense number of 25,000 copies. A latter failure in 
sale has not belied the first magnificent start. Within 
five and twenty years after the publication of the " His- 
tory," 140,000 copies had been printed and sold in the 
United Kingdom alone. The two second volumes 
brought their author, from the first edition alone, as 
much as his four and a half years banishment in India. 

On the successful historian honours now began to 
pour. The Academies of Utrecht, Munich, and Turin 
made him a member. He was named a Knight of the 
Order of Merit by the King of Prussia. Guizot pro- 
posed him for the Institute of France. The Philo- 
sophical Institution of Edinburgh chose him their Presi- 
dent. Along with Grote, Disraeli, and Lytton he received 
from the University of Oxford the degree of Doctor of 
Civil Law. On that occasion Macaulay said, " I con- 
gratulated Grote with special warmth, for, with all his 
faults of style, he has really done wonders." 

In the beginning of 1856 Macaulay, finding himself 
unable to discharge parliamentary duties according to his 
sense of how they should be discharged, resigned his 
seat for Edinburgh, and applied for the Chiltern Hun- 
dreds. Up till this time his life had been formed on the 
plainest scale, but he now made arrangements to pass 



^ 



I 



Macatday. 1 8 7 

what of it might remain to him in a more liberal provi- 
sion. It touches one to think how while Macaulay had 
been the idol of society, a member of the British Cabinet, 
amongst the greatest in the House, and the foremost in 
the country, he had not even allowed himself, until 185 1, 
the indulgence of a carriage. He had spent fifteen 
happy years in the Albany, but he now bought the lease 
of a fine house and garden at Kensington. It gave the 
historian no pleasure to leave his old quarters and the 
chambers, clustering associations of carefully-composed 
essays, elaborated poems, long evenings spent in pleasant 
company, and long days in hard historical labours. When 
the books were gone the empty cases looked like a skele- 
ton, and tears came to the historian's eyes as he paced 
the empty rooms. He felt, we conceive, like a bee wan- 
dering about amongst the cells of a dried honeycomb. It 
was no easy journey from the street up the numerous steps 
to his chambers, yet he said, " I have been happy at the 
top of this toilsome stair. Ellis came to dinner — the last 
of probably four hundred dinners, or more, that we have 
had in these chambers. Then to bed. Everything that 
I do is coloured by the thought that it is for the last time. 
One day there will come a last in good earnest." 

Removed to Holly Lodge, Campden Hill, the stream 
of the historian's life flowed just as quietly and unobtru- 
sively as it had done in the Albany. People, no doubt, 
said it was a secluded life, but in reality it was not so. 
His friends were his relations, and his companions were 
his books. When he read he had his pencil in hand, and 
he talked with his author on the margin as he heard him 
speak from his pages. In literature he was a pure con- 
servative, and he was jealous of all new-fangled ways of 
writing. If the torch was not lighted at some old beacon, 
he would by no means condescend to be guided by its 



1 88 Masters in History. 

light. We don't know, but we have some reason to sup- 
pose, that the later developments of Carlyle's style must 
have been his special aversion. The Greek warriors used 
to practise the robust exercises of the gymnasium after 
they had left off active service in the field. And so was it 
with Macaulay in his retirement at Holly Lodge. Done 
with the rough work of the open campaign, he still car- 
ried on in the portico, the garden, and the study of his 
house, those intellectual exercises with which, in his 
earlier years, he had disciplined his mind. In his literary 
ease it gave him pleasure to renew his acquaintance with 
Cicero and Plato, to read over again the novels that de- 
lighted him in youth, to hate Hook more than ever he 
had hated Croker, and to keep his memory in action by 
trying how much of Shakespeare he could get by heart 
within a specified time. The amusements of his leisure 
show the bent of his mind. At Holly Lodge we find 
our author reading, composing, recollecting, committing 
to memory, but never do we find him meditating or 
reflecting. When he goes out into his garden amongst 
his flowers it is to read the defence of Sextius, when he 
walks in his portico it is to get by heart the " Merchant of 
Venice," when he enters his study it is to consult authori- 
ties for his fifth volume, and when he is being conveyed 
over to Ireland in a steamer, he sits on deck wrapt in his 
cloak — to let the dash of billows help his historical cogi- 
tation ? by no means, but to read from his memory as 
from a book the first half of Milton's " Paradise Lost." 
The world of literature rather than that of philosophy 
was that in which he lived, and moved, and had his intel- 
lectual being ; and as he strolled, an observant student, 
amid its glades, his wanderings were often guided as much 
by mere whim as by solid consideration. Like a child 
he was as ready to fill his lap with wild flowers as with 



Macaulay. 189 

solid fruit. He could have told you how often a heroine 
of Mrs Meek had fainted in the course of her Ufe, with as 
certain accuracy as he could have run over the names of 
the Popes in their chronological order. He loved certain 
books for their badness just as he loved others for their 
goodness, and to the end of his days he was the sworn 
friend of Miss Austen. Macaulay lived in good style at 
Holly Lodge, and, as in his dress, so also in his reading, 
he had his morning and evening suits. " I read," he 
says, " ' Henderson's Iceland ' at breakfast ; — a favourite 
breakfast book with me. Why? How oddly we are 
made ! Some books which I should never dream of open- 
ing at dinner please me at breakfast, and vice versa.'' 

Macaulay's gains from literature were enormous. In one 
year (1856) he made ^20,000, and the receipt for that 
large sum the Messrs Longman still preserve as a curiosity. 
With all his wealth he was far from being close-fisted. 
We know that all poor poetry got a merciless reception 
at his hands, but we also know that no poor poet did he 
ever send empty away. No doubt his generosity was 
often ill regulated; sham Mary Howitts robbed him of 
ten-pound notes, and professional impostors, under the 
garb of broken down Cambridge Fellows, plundered him 
of hundred-pound cheques; but, on the whole, his giving 
must have done much good, and been blessed often to 
the receiver as it always was to the tender heart of the 
giver. Some will not give at all, for fear they should 
encourage one impostor. Macaulay gave always, for fear 
he should pass over one really needy. 

Macaulay, as we have seen, was not a Senior Wrangler 
of his university, but, all the same, he took the highest 
honours in life; and on August 28, 1857, he was made, 
by the advice of Palmerston, a Senior Wrangler of the 
Empire. In that year he received his coronet, and was 



190 Masters in History. 

constituted a Peer of the realm, under the style and title of 
Baron Macaulay of Rothley. Being, as he acknowledged, 
a man of humble origin and moderate fortune, he was 
surprised that such high distinction should have been 
conferred upon him ; but while he duly appreciated his 
dignity, no one, we are sure, ever wore his ribbon with 
less parade, as no one, we are certain, ever wore it with 
less envy. 

Macaulay's " History of England " is a torso. When 
he sat down to his great work, "I propose," he 
said, " to write the ' History of England ' from the 
accession of King James the Second down to a time 
within the memory of men still hving ; " but the pledge 
he never redeemed, and thus the work so far is frag- 
mentary. Good as were the articles on Atterbury, 
Bunyan, Goldsmith, Dr Johnson, and Pitt, he contri- 
buted in his later years to the " Encyclopaedia Britannica," 
how gladly would we have wanted them, to have been 
taken by the fluent and informed cicerone through the 
reign of Anne, to have lived again in the company of her 
Court, to have held conversation with Harley and 
St John, with Swift, Pope, and Arbuthnot, and to have 
talked with Bolingbroke and Steele, with Addison and 
Defoe. That part of English history which Macaulay 
was approaching at the end of the fifth volume was the 
part which of all others he would have done the best, 
and it is hopeless almost to think any other historical 
genius will arise who will bring to bear on the events of 
the period a fluency of style and a power of reaUstic 
picturing at all commensurate with his. Of course, what 
we have lost we cannot tell, but it is in no vague way we 
feel it to be immense. 

The fifth volume he commenced very reluctantly. In 
former years one work was no sooner done than another 



Macatilay. 1 9 1 

was begun, but after the fourth volume was in the hands 
of the pubhc it was some months before he again took 
pen in hand, and when he eventually did get a start 
made, he said, " God knows whether I shall ever finish 
this part. I begin it with little heart or hope." By 
reason of ill-health, a tendency to sleep, and an aversion 
to work, his progress was slow. " How the days steal 
away, and nothing done," was a common exclamation of 
his at this time. Already had he begun to grieve that 
he would not be spared to finish his work. Further than 
lessening the amount, however, his growing ailments had 
no other efi"ect on his literary products ; they certainly 
never damaged the quality of his work. There was 
nothing he was surer of than that his literary career had 
been a steady and upward progress ; that in every matter 
of style, form, language, and expression, the works of his 
mature years were vastly in advance of his more juvenile 
efforts. What was the historian's own declaration the 
student will very readily confirm. When he was writing 
least, his literary sense was at its greatest perfection ; and 
this it was which completely prevented any decline in 
the substance of his composition, or any falling away 
from that strength which is so characteristic of all his 
literary handling. 

The last volume of Macaulay's " History of England," 
the historian was not to see through the press. The 
truth is, when the beginning of 1859 came, his path was 
narrowing, and he was already faring onward among the 
shadows. When Trevelyan left for India, having been 
appointed Governor of Madras, the historian said " he 
could hardly expect to see him again. I have thought 
several times of late that the last scene of the play was 
approaching. I should wish to act it simply, but with 
fortitude and gentleness united." His love for his sister 



192 Masters in History. 

Hannah had always been peculiarly intense, and when 
some time after her husband had arrived in India she 
proposed to leave her brother and join her husband 
there, the idea of a parting — which he felt in his heart 
must be, so far as this world was concerned, a parting 
for ever — filled him with the deepest sorrow. A journey 
to Scotland did not lighten the misery which preyed on 
his too sensitive heart. On this, as on other occasions, 
he found in his books his surcease from the troubles that 
surely assailed him in his hours of reverie or contempla- 
tion. The studies of his youth thus became the con- 
solations of his age, and in the pleasures of literature he 
found an anodyne for his heaviest afflictions. The book 
which, in this emergency, he used to drive away dull 
care, was Nichol's " Literary Anecdotes," a great work in 
nine volumes, and each volume containing well nigh a 
thousand closely printed pages. He set on it with 
something like his old ardour. Every blunder in taste 
and grammar he supplied, every omission he marked, 
and, as he went on, he commented and enlarged. By 
doing a volume a week he finished his task in a little 
over two months. The sad labour was in its object only 
partially successful. The depression of mind resulted 
from causes too deep to be removed by a medicine so 
simple. Do what he might the strange unhappiness 
came back to him. " I dread," he said, " the next four 
months more than even the months which will follow the 
separation. This prolonged parting — this slow sipping 
of the vinegar and the gall — is terrible." 

The parting was to come in a different ananner from 
that which he anticipated. The December of 1859 
broke bleak and cold, and before the first fortnight of the 
month was gone, it had set in hard and enduring frost. 
Macaulay, surrounded with the warmth of Holly Lodge 



Macmilay. 193 

though he was, felt the bite of the winter blast. He was 
not an old man yet, but he felt as if he were dying of old 
age. " A month," he said, " a month more of such days 
as I have been passing of late, would make me impatient 
to get to my little narrow crib, like a weary factory 
child." 

That was what he wrote in his Journal on the 19th 
December. Four days later he made his last entry, and 
on the morning of the 28th, the hand that had written 
so much wrote its last ; it was a letter to a poor curate, 
enclosing five-and-twenty pounds. Late in the afternoon, 
when the lamps were being lighted in the streets and 
shop windows of London, the historian, sitting by his 
library fire, took up the first number of the Cornhill 
Magazine and began reading Thackeray's tale of *' Lovel 
the Widower." His nephew joined him for a little in 
the library, but seeing he was weaker than usual, he went 
off to get his mother, Mrs Trevelyan, to come and spend 
the night at the Lodge. The nephew had not been long 
gone, when Macaulay told his butler he would go to bed 
earlier that night. The butler solicited the historian to • 
rest for a little on the sofa. Macaulay put away the 
magazine and made effort as if he would rise. Then he 
reclined back in his chair and slept, but woke not again. 
The last had come in good earnest. 

Thus it was that Lord Macaulay, having made himself 
a great and enduring name, and gratified a large and 
honourable ambition, passed to his rest. To use Mr 
Gladstone's words, " Full-orbed he was seen above the 
horizon ; and, so full-orbed, after thirty-five years of con- 
stantly emitted splendour, he sank beneath it." 

In his life, Macaulay had loved to linger in Poets' 
Corner, Westminster Abbey ; and as he lingered, he was 
known to cherish the hope, that he might do so bravely 
(^) N 



194 Masters in History, 

by his countrymen, that when he was gone, they would 
bury him there. The wish passed into realization, and 
on the 9th of January i860, his countrymen laid him to 
rest amid their illustrious dead. He reposes at the feet 
of Addison, and near to the tombs of Johnson, and Gold- 
smith, and Gay. The slab that covers him bears these 
words : — 

His body is buried in peace, 
But his name liveth for evermore. 



JOHN MOTLEY. 



\ 



JOHN MOTLEY. 



Although a man cannot well be killed an hundred years 
before he is born, nevertheless circumstances may arise 
at such a date which may render his birth an impossi- 
bility. The man regarded by his generation and by the 
testimony of history as the product of his age, often 
owes his very being to the mere accident of an accident. 
When we look on these substantial works, " The Rise of 
the Dutch Repubhc " and " The History of the United 
Netherlands," looking down on us from the shelves of 
the library, it is curious to think how their existence was 
imperilled so long ago as the beginning of the last century. 

On the morning of the 29th August 1708, there was 
lamentation and weeping in the little town of Haverhill, 
Massachusetts. The early chronicles of New England 
tell how, on that day, the French and the Indians made 
a fierce attack on the town ; they recount how nearly 
forty persons were slaughtered, and a very considerable 
number of the inhabitants carried captive into Canada. 

Whilst the pillage and slaughter were proceeding, 
whilst the tomahawk and scalping-knife were doing their 
merciless work, the minister of Haverhill, the Rev. Ben- 
jamin Rolfe was shot by a bullet through the door of 
his house. The master gone, things might have been 



198 Masters in History. 

expected to go badly with the other inmates. Hagar, 
the minister's maidservant, was, however, equal to the 
occasion. So soon as she heard the whoop of the 
savages, with the true instinct of a woman, she immedi- 
ately seized the children, Mary and Elizabeth, who were 
sleeping at her side, and hid them in the cellar of the 
house. She had no more than time to secrete herself, 
when the Indians burst open the door. They ransacked 
the house, they rummaged the cellar, but fortunately 
they missed their prey. Had they but turned over two 
large wash-tubs, sitting in a certain dark corner, most 
assuredly would there have been lost to us " The Dutch 
Republic " and " The United Netherlands," and most 
certainly lost also to the page of American Literary His- 
tory the great name of John Lothrop Motley. 

Owing to the ready wit of the maidservant, both girls, 
after the storm had swept past, came scatheless from 
their hiding-places. As the years went by, EHzabeth, 
the younger, grew up to womanhood. In the course of 
time she married the Rev. Samuel Checkley of Boston, 
a gentleman of English extraction. A son of this pair, 
the Rev. Samuel Checkley, jun., also became a minister 
in Boston, and he gave one of his daughters in marriage 
to his assistant and successor, the Rev. John Lothrop. 
Anna, a daughter of this family again, became the mother 
of the historian on the 15 th of April 18 14. Her hus- 
band was Thomas Motley, whose great-grandfather went 
over to America from Belfast. Along with his brother, 
for the long period of nearly half-a-century, Thomas 
Motley carried on a large and lucrative business concern 
in the city of Boston. His family numbered eight, and 
in the order of birth our historian stood second. 

The merchant and his wife were the handsomest 
couple in all Boston. Thomas Motley was the very type 



John Motley. 199 

of the American ; shrewd and vivacious, he was a man 
both of talent and abiHty. Loving books for their own 
sake, he had made himself some reputation as an author. 
Over the education of his children he watched with care, 
taking particular patience with their reading and decla- 
mation. In his wife the enterprising merchant found a 
suitable companion. She was a lady endowed with the 
finest gifts of tact and affection. To a rare sweetness of 
temper there was united in Mrs Motley a certain regal 
beauty " which made her the type of a perfect mother- 
hood." 

It is ever to the offspring of such parents we turn for 
the perfectest types of the race, ever in them we seek for 
the finest graces of person and intellect. We cannot 
speak for the rest of the family, but certainly there was 
combined in Thomas Lothrop the best mental and 
physical qualities of his parents. He grew up tall and 
lithe, and no companion ever came into contact with 
him without marking the grace of his every movement and 
gesture. The set of his beautiful head on his shoulders 
was characterised by peculiar elegance. Lady Byron 
said he brought her in mind of her husband more than 
any other man she ever met ; but those who saw Motley 
in the bloom of his youth would never allow that, in the 
matter of personal appearance, Byron came at all near 
him. Letting this be as it may, in certain qualities of 
spirit the famous American bore unmistakable likeness 
to the more famous Englishman. In the young Motley 
there was a certain Byronic haughtiness and cynicism, 
and in the lineaments of his early character there are 
lines of superciHousness, wilfulness, and impetuosity. 
We trace the shortcomings of the poet to certain defi- 
ciences in maternal training, but the shortcomings of the 
historian are on that score wholly unaccountable^ and are 
only to be sought for in the original bent of his mind. 



200 Masters in History. 

The family residence was No. 7 Walnut Street, both 
garden and garret of which the boy was allowed to 
appropriate for the purpose of carrying out his schemes 
of amusement. The lad loved skating and swimming, 
but, for the most part, he found within the bounds of 
his home a field wide enough for the prosecution of all 
his youthful exercises. Little man as he was at eleven, 
he was still a great reader, and many hours did he while 
away with the novels of Scott and of Cooper. In the 
course of his life his novel-reading was not nearly so ex- 
tensive as Macaulay's, but it was as soon begun, and pos- 
sibly, as a habit, became as rapidly confirmed. In those 
immature years the garret was really the boy's study. 
After the historian had come to eminence, a younger 
brother used to tell how John used to give him barley- 
sugar to keep him quiet while he lay wrapped up in a 
shawl at his feet, figuring the dead Caesar, and he de- 
claimed the oration of Anthony over the prostrate body. 
In that garret in Walnut Street there met, every Saturday 
afternoon, three boys. They clad themselves in doublets 
and plumed hats j they made themselves kings or robbers, 
saints or sinners, according to the requirements of their 
varying moods; and according as the mind of their genius 
veered, they expressed themselves in the language of 
tragedy or comedy. These three boys all came to act 
memorable parts in life : John Lothrop Motley " became 
the dramatist of a nation's life history ;" Thomas Gold 
Appleton effloresced into an agreeable and popular 
writer ; Wendell Phillips became the Chrysostom of 
American liberty. 

The boy having passed a year at a school in Jamaica 
Plain, was now sent to Round Hill, Northampton, then 
under the care of Mr Cogswell and Mr Bancroft. Tak- 
ing into account the abilities and scholarship of Mr 



John Motley. 201 

Bancroft, the pupil must ever be regarded as having 
been fortunate in his teacher. The meeting of precep- 
tor and scholar is, however, remarkable for other reasons. 
George Bancroft is the accomplished historian of the 
United States, and when we add to his name the names of 
Motley and Prescott, we complete the trinity of Ameri- 
can masters in history. There are evidences which go 
to show that Bancroft took the utmost pains with his 
pupil ', but what would he have thought if he had known 
when he was teaching him German, then a language but 
seldom taught, that he was laying the foundation of one 
of the greatest literary fabrics ! and what would have been 
his feelings had he known that this beautiful Boston youth 
was yet to become a historian of world-wide reputation, 
and to be recognised at the shrine of Clio as one of her 
most worthy worshippers. 

Than the power of acquiring languages there is pos- 
sibly no gift that goes further, or is more highly 
appreciated, at public seminaries j and this faculty young 
Motley possessed in a very extraordinary degree. It was 
his aptitude for languages that had prompted Bancroft 
to teach the boy German ; but, strange to say, his very 
abilities lay at the root of his weaknesses. Learning 
readily what other boys learned slowly, he was led into 
the fatal error of trusting to his genius more than to his 
powers of application. Finding himself an object of ad- 
miration and flattery, certain original tendencies of his 
constitution to imperiousness and pride were unduly 
fostered and developed at the expense of the solid quali- 
ties of character. In the eyes of his school-fellows, his 
gifts must have been the spoiling of him, for it is not at 
all likely that boys would either love or respect any of 
their companions who gave themselves airs of superiority. 
At Round Hill the boy, had he been more condescend- 



202 Master's in History. 

ing, had been more loved ; had he been less clever, had 
been more popular. The real danger of the youth lay in 
his acquiring those habits of hasty reading which would 
entirely unfit the man for carrying out any great purpose 
that required the exercise of continued energy and reso- 
lution. This kind of school training was the very worst 
possible discipline for college life; but if, as a student, he 
did not entirely redeem himself from the errors of the 
school-boy, 'as a man he wholly eradicated them from his 
character. He soon came to discover, what many have 
discovered before and since, that work of itself partakes 
of the nature of genius, and that that ability is next to 
worthless which is not joined to powers of application. 
Remembering the clever, careless school-boy, his friends 
were astonished at the hard-working man ; knowing the 
flippancy of the youth, they opened their eyes in wonder 
at the resolution of the historian. Those who thought he 
was only good for the dash of the short race were taken 
aback "at the long-breathed tenacity of purpose" he 
manifested in running the countless laps of his after per- 
formances. Although possessed of an impulsive and 
ardent disposition, he seems, on the whole, to have be- 
haved himself at Round Hill with becoming propriety. 
Apart from his school work, and the desultory reading of 
which he was so fond, he gave his brain little other exer- 
cise. Two chapters of a novel, after the style of Cooper, 
summed up his juvenile efforts in original composition. 
The romance began not with one, but with two solitary 
horsemen riding up to an inn in the valley of the Housa- 
tonic. Where the Housatonic was the boy did not know; 
he was satisfied that the sound of the word fulfilled the 
requirements of his young imagination. 

So soon as a man does anything notable in the world, 
and particularly in the world of letters, he excites a strong 



John Motley. 203 

personal interest ; every part of his life is immediately 
scanned with a care which many parts do not really de- 
serve, and all his actions surrounded with an importance 
which belong only to few of them. Remembering the 
great historian, we are apt to forget that even when he 
entered college he was still the merest child, acting, for 
the most part, from motives hardly definable, and with 
the very least forethought. It must ever be a mistake to 
set anything but the slightest value on those actions of 
early youth performed before either the responsibilities 
of life are felt, or its ambitions fired. 

When young Motley went up from Round Hill to 
Harvard he was only thirteen years of age. He took 
with him a good reputation as a linguist, and altogether 
commenced his college career under the most favourable 
auspices. Wendell Holmes says he remembers " the 
impression which his striking personal beauty produced 
upon him as he took his seat in the college chapel." 
During the first year of his course he did his work in a 
manner commensurate with his abilities, and stood third 
in his class. Next session, however, he fell away from 
study so terribly that he was rusticated. In the univer- 
sities of England rustication is usually the penalty of the 
gravest offences, but, in the case of Motley, continued 
negligence is the reason assigned. But whatever was the 
reason of his being sent to the country, it did him good, 
and he came back sobered, and with a larger inclination 
for work. While, however, after being sent down, he did 
his part as a student with more fidelity, he never after- 
wards showed the least desire for academical distinction, 
or put forth the smallest efforts to secure it. Although 
not manifested in the classes, his abiHty was recognised 
by his fellow-students, and in a very marked manner. 
The members of the Phi Beta Kappa Society consisted 



204 Masters in History, 

of the first sixteen of every class, but the rules of the 
association were stretched in the case of Motley, as it was 
considered his after career would be such as would make 
it an honour for the society to have his name on their roll 
of members. 

Motley improved and educated himself in lines lying 
apart from regular college work. There was a certain 
shallow drawer in a writing table of his rooms which 
he delighted to fill with character sketches, prose por- 
traits, plays, and poems ; and as often as the drawer was 
filled with the fruits of his industry he delighted in 
making a little bonfire of the mass. As there must have 
been amongst these productions pieces of real merit, it is 
to be regretted that so few of his college effusions have, 
from this cause, been preserved to us. As yet, his his- 
torical instincts were only taking the crudest of shapes. 
One day a tutor stood aghast before the vast number of 
novels on the student's table. He remonstrated with 
Motley, but only to receive the boastful answer, " I am 
reading historically, and have come to the novels of the 
nineteenth century. Taken in a lump, they are very hard 
reading." 

The personal traits of his character were few. He left 
different impressions on different companions. One 
bears testimony, " He was a manly boy, with no love or 
leaning to girls' company ; no care for dress j not a trace 
of personal vanity. He was, or at least seemed, wholly 
unconscious of his rare beauty, and of the fascination of 
his manner ; not a trace of pretence, the simplest and 
most natural creature in the world." Another says, '' He 
seemed to have a passion for dress. But, as in every- 
thing else, so in this, his fancy was a fitful one. At one 
time he would excite our admiration by the splendour of 
his outfit, and perhaps the next week he would seem to 



John Motley. 205 

take equal pleasure in his slovenly or careless appear- 
ance." We cannot read the latter picture without recal- 
ling to our recollection its likeness to the portrait of a 
certain eminent statesman as he appeared, when a youth 
of nineteen, in the house of the Countess of Blessington. 
That these portraits of Motley are quite reconcileable, the 
" Autocrat of the Breakfast Table " very cleverly shows. 
''Motley so well became everything he wore, that, if he had 
sprung from his bed, and slipped his clothes on at an 
alarum fire, his costume would have looked like a prince's 
undress. His natural presentment, like that of Count 
D'Orsay, was of the kind which suggests the intentional 
effects of an elaborate toilet, no matter how little thought 
or care may have been given to make it effective. I 
think ' the passion for dress ' was really only a seeming, 
and that he often excited admiration when he had not 
taken half the pains to adorn himself, that many a youth, 
less favoured by nature, has wasted upon his unblest 
exterior only to be laughed at." Writing verses for the 
*' Anti-Masonic Mirror," occasional papers for a maga- 
zine then started by Mr Willis, welcoming every appear- 
ance of Christopher in Blackwood With, as great a glee as 
if he had been a young Scotch Tory, and supping with 
his friends every week at Fresh Pond and Gallagher's, 
Motley's student days, such as they were, came to an 
end. Really the most notable thing in the young man's 
college life was a letter one of his companions received 
from Madame Goethe, on the occasion of his sending her 
an essay on Goethe, which Motley had spoken at one of 
the college exhibitions. Madame Goethe was so pleased 
with the performance that she said, " I want to see the 
first book that young man will write." 

It is to be seen at a glance that the college days of 
Motley were not wholly satisfactory. There was promise 



2o6 Masters in History. 

in them \ but manifestly that promise was not in the ordi- 
nary sphere of university work. Looking back on the 
trivial efforts made by the future historian during those 
valuable Harvard years, it consoles one to think on the 
observation of Barthlemy, that no Grecian youth who 
won a prize at Olympia as a boy ever won a prize at 
Olympia as a man; — he noticed that the severity of a too 
early training destroyed the capabilities of the matured 
powers. Thinking, again, however, of Motley's discur- 
sive studies, we remember a philosophical observation of 
Boswell in the first chapter of his " Life of Johnson." 
Says the prince of biographers : — " The flesh of animals 
who feed excursively is allowed to have a higher flavour 
than that of those who are cooped up. May there not 
be the same difference between men who read as their 
taste prompts, and men who are confined to their cells 
and colleges to stated tasks ? " 

As time went past the positive necessity of application 
became to Motley more and more apparent, and after 
leaving Harvard for the universities of Berlin and Gottin- 
gen, it must be confessed, he worked so hard as to make 
up in great part, in his two years' residence in Europe, 
what he had lost at the American college. 183 2-1 83 3 
were the years the student spent in Germany, and so 
filled were they with studious labours, that we have of 
them very little record. What record we have of them, 
however, shows that Motley was particularly fortunate in 
the two companionships he formed with two contem- 
porary students. His young friends of Berlin and Got- 
tingen came even to be more famous than those of Wal- 
nut Street. The one was Count Alexander Keyserling, 
the distinguished botanist; and the other Prince Bismarck, 
the dictator of German politics. Bismarck, writing last 
year to Professor Holmes, told how he met Motley first 



John Motley, 207 

at Gottingen, and how he drew to him on account of his 
wit, humour, and originality. When they left Gottingen 
the three students became fellow lodgers in a house in 
BerHn. They used to discuss Shakespeare, Byron, and 
Goethe, till the small hours ; but in all their debates the 
American ever maintained a mild and amiable temper. 
Prince Bismarck goes on to say :— " The most striking 
feature of his handsome and delicate appearance was un- 
commonly large and beautiful eyes. He never entered a 
drawing-room without exciting the curiosity and sympathy 
of the ladies." In after years the two old students met 
repeatedly. At Frankfurt, Motley stayed with his old 
friend, and the last occasion on which they met was at 
Varzin in 1872, at the celebration of Bismarck's silver 
wedding. 

After Motley's return from Germany in 1834, he ap- 
pears to have given himself for a time to the study of 
Law. He found the profession uncongenial, and he 
never, like Macaulay, entertained the most distant 
thoughts of devoting his life to its exacting service. Still, 
without having settled to a definite profession, he mar- 
ried, on the 2d March 1837, Miss Mary Benjamin, then 
residing with her brother at No. 14 Temple Place. This 
lady, although not possibly of so high intellectual acquire- 
ments as the wife of the historian of Greece, was still 
even more serviceable to her husband than Mrs Grote to 
hers. Although Mrs Motley never directly helped her 
husband with his work, yet without her the work had 
possibly never been done at all. What success the his- 
torian achieved in his life was largely owing to the impe- 
tus given to his energies by her gentle and amiable spirit. 
Those who knew her " found it hard to speak of her in 
the common terms of praise which they award to the 
good and the lovely." Her influence gave Motley the 



2o8 Masters in History. 

two things he wanted most, concentration and direction. 
After his marriage he found no difficulty in devoting him- 
self to a particular work, and settling himself to a task to 
bring it to a successful termination. 

In 1839, two years after Motley's marriage, appeared 
his first literary work, " Morton's Hope," a novel, in two 
volumes. It was not without its merits, but, lacking 
everything a novel should have, it proved a complete 
failure. Showing passion boiling behind a mask of 
cynicism, it treated the reader to an ill-concealed Byronism. 
Morton was a mixed Vivian Grey and Pelham, and his 
hope was pretty much the hope of the former; it was 
something big and grand, but altogether vague and 
shadowy. "The novel is a chaos before the creative 
epoch; the light has not been divided from the dark- 
ness ; the firmament has not yet divided the waters from 
the waters." "Morton's Hope" is valuable to a large 
extent just as " Vivian Grey" is valuable. In it we find 
both an autobiography and a forecast of the author's 
future as it seemed in his fancy to lie stretched out 
before him. " Morton's Hope" gives us the dream of 
the young historian ; " Vivian Grey," again, presents us 
with the vision of the young politician. We give such 
passages as the following, partly as specimens of Motley's 
early style, and partly to supplement our narrative of his 
life, for with regard to the primary reference of the 
author there cannot be the least doubt : — 

" The ground of my early character was plasticity and 
fickleness. I was mortified by this exposure of my 
ignorance, and disgusted with my former course of read- 
ing. I now set myself violently to the study of history. 
With my turn of mind and with the preposterous habits 
I had been daily acquiring, I could not fail to make as 
gross mistakes in the pursuit of this as of other branches 



John Motley. 209 

of knowledge. I imagined, on setting out, a system of 
strict and impartial investigation of the sources of history. 
I was inspired with the absurd ambition, not uncommon 
to youthful students, of knowing as much as their masters. 
I imagined it necessary for me, stripling as I was, to 
study the authorities ; and, imbued with the strict neces- 
sity of judging for myself, I turned from the limpid 
pages of the modern historians to the notes and authori- 
ties at the bottom of the page. These, of course, sent 
me back to my monastic acquaintances, and I again 
found myself in such congenial company to a youthful 
and ardent mind as Florence of Worcester and Simeon 
of Durham, the venerable Bede, and Matthew Paris ; 
and so on to Gregory and Fredegarius, down to the 
more modern and elegant pages of Froissart, Hollinshed, 
Hooker, and Stowe. Infant as I was, I presumed to 
grapple with masses of learning almost beyond the 
strength of the giants of history. A spendthrift of my 
time and labour, I went out of my way to collect materials 
and to build for myself, when I should have known that 
older and abler architects had already appropriated all 
that was worth preserving \ that the edifice was built, the 
quarry exhausted, and that I was, consequently, only 
delving amidst rubbish. . . . 

"From studying and investigating the sources of 
history with my own eyes, I went a step further; I 
refused the guidance of modern writers ; and proceeding 
from one point of presumption to another, I came to the 
magnanimous conviction that I could not know history 
as I ought to know it unless I wrote it for myself. . . . 

" My ambition was boundless ; my dreams of glory 

were not confined to authorship and literature alone ; but 

every sphere in which the intellect of man exerts itself 

revolved in a blaze of light before me. And there I sat 
(2) O 



2IO Mastei's in History. 

in my solitude and dreamed such wondrous dreams ! 
Events were thickening around me which were soon to 
change the world — but they were unmarked by me. 
The country was changing to a mighty theatre, on whose 
stage those who were as great as I fancied myself to be, 
were to enact a stupendous drama in which I had no 
part. I saw it not ; I knew it not \ and yet how infinitely 
beautiful were the imaginations of my solitude ! Fancy 
shook her kaleidoscope each moment as each directed, 
and lo ! what new, fantastic, brilliant, but what unmean- 
ing visions. My ambitious anticipations were as bound- 
less as they were various and conflicting. There was 
not a path which leads to glory in which I was not 
destined to gather laurels. As a warrior I would conquer 
and overrun the world ; as a statesman I would re- 
organize and govern it ; as a historian I would consign 
it to immortality ; and in my leisure moments I would 
be a great poet and man of the world." 

The outline is bold enough and filled in with warm 
enough colours surely. If there is a saving power in 
hope, then this hero would certainly never perish. How 
far the ideal was found in the real, how far the dream 
had its fulfilment, and "how many of the coins the dervise 
gave the merchant did not turn into leaves next morning," 
the sequel will show. 

Mr Carlyle in one or other of his essays makes the 
remark, that he who would write heroic poems should 
make his whole life a heroic poem. A similar observa- 
tion might be made about our great historians. When 
we look over the whole range of masters in history, we 
find that great part of them are also historical personages. 
Herodotus was not merely the father of history; when he 
returned to Halicarnassus, after having fled from the fury 
of Lygdamis, he took a prominent part in expelling the 



John Motley. 2 1 1 

tyrant from his native city. Thucydides was not only the 
historian of the demus HaUmus; he led an Athenian 
squadron at Thasus. Xenophon not only wrote the 
"Anabasis," he was also leader of the ten thousand. 
Tacitus was not only the author of the "Annales," he 
was also a consul and in high office at the court of 
Vespasian. Josephus was a Jewish leader and warrior 
as well as a Jewish historian. We have seen how the 
exertion of Grote secured for his countrymen the ballot, 
and how Macaulay was both a Governor of India and a 
distinguished Parliamentary debater. We now turn to 
the first page of Motley's public career. 

In 18*4 the future historian of the Netherlands was 
appointed Secretary of Legation to the Russian Mission. 
This office he held only for a very short period. He feared 
to expose his wife and two young children to the rigours 
of a Russian climate, and so far away from those whom 
he loved most, the heart of the young husband grew 
home-sick. His position was such that every door in 
St Petersburg would have readily opened unto him, but 
his reserve was such that it would have taken him longer 
time " to have become intimate than to thaw the Baltic." 
That he had an observant eye for what was going on 
round about him, and a facile pen to describe it, the 
following, from a letter to his mother, will show : — " We 
entered through a small vestibule, with the usual arrange- 
ment of treble doors, padded with leather to exclude the 
cold, and guarded by two 'proud young porters' in 
severe cocked-hats and formidable batons, into a broad 
hall — threw off our furred boots and cloaks, ascended a 
carpeted marble staircase, in every angle of which stood 
a statuesque footman in gaudy coat and unblemished 
unmentionables, and reached a broad landing on the 
top, as usual thronged with servants. Thence we passed 



212 Masters in History. 



through an ante-chamber into a long, high, brilliantly 
lighted, saffron-papered room, in which a dozen card- 
tables were arranged, and thence into the receiving- 
room. This was a large room, with splendidly inlaid 
and polished floor, the walls covered with crimson satin, 
the cornices heavily encrusted with gold, and the ceiling 
beautifully painted in arabesque. The massive fauteuils 
and sofas, as also the drapery, were of crimson satin, 
with a profusion of gilding. . . . One might almost 
imagined one's-self in the Hand of the cypress and 
myrtle ' instead of our actual whereabout upon the polar 
banks of the Neva. Wandering through these mimic 
groves, or reposing from the fatigues of the dance, was 
many a fair and graceful form, while the brilliantly- 
lighted ball-room, filled with hundreds of exquisitely- 
dressed women (for the Russian ladies, if not pretty, are 
graceful, and make admirable toilettes), formed a dazzling 
contrast with the tempered light of the ' Winter Garden.' 
The conservatory opened into a library, and from the 
library you reach the ante-chamber, thus completing the 
* giro ' of one of the prettiest houses in St Petersburg. 
I waltzed one waltz and quadrilled one quadrille — but it 
was hard work; and as the sole occupation of these 
parties is dancing and card-playing — conversation appa- 
rently not being customary — they are to me not very 
attractive." Moving about amongst such scenes as these, 
the heart of the young diplomatist was still in Boston ; 
and after staying in the Russian capital only a few months, 
he returned again to America. Although resigning his 
appointment thus early, there was no unpleasantness 
occurred. He simply gave up an ofiice which he found 
did not suit him, and the emoluments of which were 
inadequate. 

Disappointed with his first efforts to serve the Re- 



^ 



John Motley, 2 1 3 

public, he returned to America only to mourn the loss 
of his first-born, who had died in his absence. 

The state of political feeling at the time was not such 
as could bring any consolation to Motley in the midst 
of his sorrows and disappointments. The election of a 
Mr Palk instead of Mr Henry Clay, a gentleman of 
probity and honour, ruffled his temper dreadfully, and 
put him almost in despair about the nature of American 
institutions generally. He thought the election " proved 
that a man better qualified by an extraordinary combina- 
tion of advantages to administer the government than 
any man now living, or any man we can ever produce 
again, can be beaten by anybody. It has taken forty 
years to prepare such a man for the Presidency, and the 
result is that he can be beaten by anybody — Mr Palk is 
anybody — he is ' Mr Quelconque.' " 

Motley had taken some part in local pohtics, and 
made various speeches ; but after an election, where 
both experience and intellectual power had gone to the 
wall, he turned with disgust from a career that could 
only make the man of character a note-distributor, a 
fence-viewer, or a hog-reeve. These were the first steps 
in that statesmanship which, according to " Morton's 
Hope," " was to reorganize and govern the world." 

Turning from the turbid waters of American politics. 
Motley found solace in the prosecution of his literary 
studies. In the North American Review for 1845 he 
published a Memoir of the life of Peter the Great. This 
was a most able production, and his first essay in the 
historical field. It marked the concentration and de- 
velopment of that diffused power which his friends had 
noticed in his college career. It had a welcome from 
the American public somewhat similar to that accorded 
to Macaulay's " Milton " by the English people. If in 



214 Masters in History , 

his novel he had given the world a revelation of his 
personality, in his essay he gave an unmistakable mani- 
festation of his powers as biographer and historian. 
While the American public admired it for its intrinsic 
merit, his relations regarded it as the first of a series of 
more ambitious and elaborate performances. It is of 
interest to the student as showing "the movement of 
the hand, the glow of the colour, that were in due time 
to display on a broader canvas the full-length portraits 
of William the Silent and of John of Bameveld." The 
July of 1847 saw the pubHcation of a paper on Balzac, 
the man ''who made twenty assaults upon fame, and had 
forty books killed under him," before he gained the 
heights of popular favour. In October 1849 he gave to 
the world, through the pages of the Reviezv, another 
historical study on the '' PoUty of the Puritans." The 
article was written in a thoroughly American spirit, and 
takes a comprehensive view of American liberaHsm. 
There is real insight in such an observation as the follow- 
ing : — " We enjoy an inestimable advantage in America. 
One can be a republican, a democrat, without being a 
radical. A radical, one who would uproot, is a man 
whose trade is dangerous to society. Here is but little 
to uproot. The trade cannot flourish. All classes are 
conservative by necessity, for none can wish to change 
the structure of our poHty." 

The year 1849 is memorable as the year of the death of 
Joseph Lewis Stackpole, Motley's most intimate friend and 
brother-in-law. This gentleman, although not possessing 
the parts of the historian, had yet more discretion, com- 
mon sense, and knowledge of the world, and he was of 
the utmost service to Motley in restraining his impulsive 
disposition, and directing his talents to appropriate 
objects of study. He perished in a railway accident, 



John Motley. 2 1 5 

and in his death, Holmes says, the historian lost more 
than he ever knew. The year of Motley's brother-in- 
law's death was also the year in which he sat as a mem- 
ber of the Massachusetts House of Representatives ; but 
having brought forward a report, when he acted as Chair- 
man of an Education Committee, which received a criti- 
cism which he was not able to refute, he retired, " cured 
of any ambition for political promotion in Massachusetts." 
This same year also he gave to the world a second novel. 
It was a vast advance on his primary effort, and the 
reader found the perfume of " Vivian Grey " lost in the 
flavour of " Kenilworth." " Merry Mount " was founded 
on a half historical basis, and, like a vestibule, we pass 
through it to that part of Motley's life filled with purely 
historical studies. 

So early as 1846 Motley had begun collecting mate- 
rials for his " Rise of the Dutch Republic." When, how- 
ever, in 1850, he found himself willing to set seriously 
to work, he discovered in his way a most unexpected, 
and, as it appeared at first sight, a wholly insur- 
mountable difficulty. He had hardly sat down in earnest 
to his desk when he heard that Mr Prescott was occupied 
with an historical work covering the same field. The 
information was painful and disappointing, but, like the 
man of honour he was. Motley resolved to pursue a straight- 
forward and open course. Before throwing down his pen 
and abandoning what had been to him the cherished 
dream of years, before throwing aside an undertaking 
that must have involved the complete renunciation of 
authorship^ he resolved, stranger as he was to the veteran 
historian, he would seek him out and ascertain from his 
own lips his views of the matter. " My subject," he 
says, " had taken me up, drawn me on, and absorbed 
me into itself. It was necessary for me, it seemed, to 



2 1 6 Masters in History. 

write the book I had been thinking much of, even if it 
were destined to fall dead from the press, and I had no 
inclination to write any other." Prescott received 
Motley in the very kindest spirit; he dissuaded him from 
abandoning the work, assured him that one able book 
never yet injured another, and ended by offering to place 
at Motley's disposal any works in his library that he 
thought would be useful to him in the prosecution of his 
undertaking. All this was most handsome. The fact 
was, the older was thoroughly capable of sympathising 
with the younger man, for Prescott in his earlier days 
had been placed in a similar predicament when he began 
his " History of the Conquest of Mexico." Counselling 
Motley as he did, in reality he was only giving the 
advice he himself received. Great works depend not 
merely on accidents of birth, as has already been shown; 
they depend sometimes on such trivial things as a genial 
reception and a kindly manner. '' Had the result 
of that interview been different," said Motley, — " had he 
distinctly stated, or even vaguely hinted, that it would 
be as well I should select some other topic, or had he 
only sprinkled me with the cold water of conventional 
and commonplace encouragement, — I should have gone 
from him with a chill upon my mind, and, no doubt, 
have laid down the pen at once ; for, as I have already 
said, it was not that I cared about writing a history, but 
that I felt an inevitable impulse to write one particular 
history. And although it seems easy enough for a man 
of world-wide reputation thus to extend the right hand of 
fellowship to an unknown and struggling aspirant, yet I fear 
that the history of literature will show that such instances 
of disinterested kindness are as rare as they are noble." 

To Motley, who wished to do his work systematically 
and thoroughly, it was highly unsatisfactory to labour at 



John Motley. 217 

such a distance from original references and the archives 
of Europe. He had already, in 185 1, done a large part 
of his task, but the necessity of greater investigation 
and research so grew upon him that he started with his 
family for the continent, to begin his labours anew. He 
spent several years in Europe in unintermitting study 
and research, and in the course of his investigations he 
visited the libraries of BerHn, Dresden, the Hague, and 
Brussels. We cannot follow the historian through all 
his wanderings, but the following lucid sentences, taken 
from a letter to Holmes, give us sufficient insight into 
his manner of life while pursuing his researches. They 
also show, while he was doing the laborious work of 
the history, he could still ply the tripping pen of the 
novelist : — 

"Brussels, 20th November 1853. Our daily career 
is very regular and monotonous. Our life is as stagnant 
as a Dutch canal. Not that I complain of it ; on the 
contrary, the canal may be richly freighted with mer- 
chandise and be a short cut to the ocean of abundant 
and perpetual knowledge; but, at the same time, few 
points rise above the level of so regular a life, to be 
worthy of your notice. You must, therefore, allow me 
to meander along the meadows of common-place. Don't 
expect anything of the impetuous or boiling style. We 
go it weak here. I don't know whether you were ever 
in Brussels. ... I haunt this place because it is my 
scene, my theatre. Here were enacted so many deep 
tragedies, so many stately dramas, and even so many 
farces, which have been familiar to me so long that I 
have got to imagine myself invested with a kind of 
property in the place, and look at it as if it were 
merely the theatre, with the coulisses, machinery, 
drapery, etc., for representing scenes which have long 



2 1 8 Masters in History. 

since vanished, and which no more enter the minds of 
the men and women who are actually moving across its 
pavement than if they had occurred in the moon. With 
the present generation I am not familiar. En revanche^ 
the dead men of the place are my intimate friends. I 
am at home in any cemetery. With the fellows of the 
sixteenth century I am on the most familiar terms. 
Any ghost that ever flits by night across the moonlit 
square is at once hailed by me as a man and a brother. 
I call him by his Christian name at once. My habits 
here for the present year are very regular. I came here, 
having, as I thought, finished my work, or rather the 
first part (something like three or four volumes, 8vo), 
but I find so much original matter here, and so 
many emendations to make, that I am ready to 
despair. However, there is nothing for it, but to 
penelopize, pull to pieces, and stitch away again. 
Whatever may be the result of my labour, nobody can 
say I have not worked like a brute beast — but I don't 
care for the result. The labour is in itself its own 
reward, and all I want. I go day after day to the 
Archives here (as I went all summer at the Hague) 
studying the old letters and documents of the fifteenth 
century. Here I remain among my fellow-worms, 
feeding on those musty mulberry leaves, out of which we 
are afterwards to spin our silk. How can you expect any- 
thing interesting from such a human cocoon ? It is, how- 
ever, not without its amusement, in a mouldy sort of way, 
this reading of dead letters. It is something to read 
the real, hona-jide sign manual of such fellows as William 
of Orange, Count Egmont, Alexander Tarvese, Philip 
II., Cardinal Granvelle, and the rest of them. It gives 
a ' realizing sense,' as the Americans have it." 

At length the labours of ten years were brought to a 



John Motley, 219 

conclusion. Bearing with him his huge manuscript, he 
now emerged from his continental retirement and repaired 
to London, to make arrangements for the publishing of 
the work. To the booksellers of London he was utterly 
unknown, and not one of them would undertake the 
publication of the history on their own responsibility. 
First he called on Mr Murray, who afterwards published 
the United Netherlands, but it was only to be politely 
rebuffed. Eventually, the author, through Mr John 
Chapman, gave the work to the world at his own ex- 
pense. In a very few weeks after its publication there 
was gnashing of teeth amongst the booksellers who had 
declined the manuscript. The ^' Rise of the Dutch 
Republic " immediately took the popular taste, and before 
1850 had closed no less than 15,000 copies of the 
work had been sold in England alone. Those who had 
slumbered and slept over " Morton's Hope," and drowsed 
over " Merry Mount," now found their sleepiness slip from 
them like a garment as they perused the glowing pages 
of the Dutch Republic. The patient research united to 
the full colouring, the rapidity of movement combined 
with the reality of portraiture, kept the reading world 
enthralled as they had never been by history or romance 
before or since. When Mr Froude read the work, he 
passed his word in the Westminster Review, that it would 
take its place amongst the finest histories in this or in 
any language; and so far as gone his prediction still 
holds. There is no indication that it has before it a 
waning popularity, and eventually the dusty shelf of a 
library as its final resting-place. The Dutch Republic 
possesses a double life : it will live as an accurate record 
of facts ; it will live as a thrilling narrative. The ruddy 
vivacity of the story, the deep dye of the language and 
the sumptuousness of the dramatic descriptions, make one 



2 20 Masters in History. 

inclined to say of the author what Guido said of Rubens : 
" The fellow mixes blood with his colours." The Re- 
public marks usually a period in a man's reading. He for- 
gets when he read other works, but he always remembers 
about it, and calculates before and after it as a chrono- 
logical event in his intellectual existence. After reading 
the volumes, Prescott held out to Motley the hand of 
fellowship, rejoicing most of all in this, that it had been 
reserved for one of his countrymen to tell the story of 
the memorable revolution better than it ever had been 
told. Holmes says : — " The lonely student, who had 
almost forgotten the look of living men in the solitude 
of archives haunted by dead memories, found himself 
suddenly in the full blaze of a great reputation." The 
following is Motley's description of the siege of Antwerp : — 
" At ten o'clock, a moving wood was descried approach- 
ing the citadel from the south-west. The whole body of 
the mutineers from Alost, wearing green branches in 
their helmets, had arrived under command of their 
Eletto, Navarrete. Nearly three thousand in number, 
they rushed into the castle, having accomplished their 
march of twenty-four miles since three o'clock in the 
morning. They were received with open arms. Sancho 
d'Avila ordered food and refreshments to be laid before 
them, but they refused everything but a draught of wine. 
They would dine in Paradise, they said, or sup in 
Antwerp. Finding his allies in such spirit, Don Sancho 
would not balk their humour. Since early morning his 
own veterans had been eagerly waiting his signal, * strain- 
ing upon the start.' The troops of Romero, Vargas, 
Valdez, were no less impatient. At about an hour before 
noon, nearly every living man in the citadel was mustered 
for the attack, hardly men enough being left behind to 
guard the gates. Five thousand veteran foot soldiers, 



John Motley. 221 

besides six hundred cavalry, armed to the teeth, sallied 
from the portals of Alva's citadel. In the counterscarp 
they fell upon their knees, to invoke, according to custom, 
the blessing of God upon the devil's work, which they 
were about to commit. The Eletto bore a standard, one 
side of which was emblazoned with the crucified Saviour, 
and the other with the Virgin Mary. The image of Him 
who said, 'Love your enemies,' and the gentle face of 
the Madonna, were to smile from heaven upon deeds 
which might cause a shudder in the depths of hell. 
Their brief orisons concluded, they swept forward to the 
city. Three thousand Spaniards, under their Eletto, were 
to enter by the street of Saint Michael; the Germans 
and the remainder of the Spanish foot, commanded by 
Romero, through that of Saint George. Champagny 
saw them coming, and spoke a last word of encourage- 
ment to the Walloons. The next moment the compact 
mass struck the barrier, as the thunderbolt descends 
from the cloud. The Spaniards clashed through the 
bulwark, as though it had been a wall of glass. The 
Eletto was first to mount the rampart ; the next instant 
he was shot dead, while his followers, undismayed, sprang 
over his body, and poured into the streets. The fatal 
gaps, due to timidity and carelessness, let in the destruc- 
tive tide. Champagny, seeing that the enemies had all 
crossed the barrier, leaped over a garden wall, passed 
through a house into a narrow lane, and thence to the 
nearest station of the German troops. Hastily collecting 
a small force he led them in person to the rescue. The 
Germans fought well, died well, but they could not 
reanimate the courage of the Walloons, and all were now 
in full retreat, pursued by the ferocious Spaniards. In 
vain Champagny stormed among them j in vain he strove 
to rally their broken ranks. With his own hand he seized 



2 22 Masters in History. 

a banner from a retreating ensign, and called upon the 
nearest soldiers to make a stand against the foe. It was 
to bid the flying clouds pause before the tempest. Torn, 
broken, aimless, the scattered troops whirled about the 
streets before the pursuing wrath. Champagny, not yet 
despairing, galloped hither and thither, calling upon the 
burghers everywhere to rise in defence of their homes, 
nor did he call in vain. They came forth from every 
place of rendezvous, from every alley, from every house. 
They fought as men fight to defend their hearths and 
altars, but what could individual devotion avail against 
the compact, disciplined, resistless mass of their foes? 
The order of defence was broken ; there was no system, 
no concert, no rallying point, no authority. So soon as 
it was known the Spaniards had crossed the rampart, 
that its six thousand defenders were in full retreat, it was 
inevitable that a panic should seize the city. 

" Their entrance once effected, the Spanish force had 
separated, according to previous arrangement, into two 
divisions, one half charging up the long street of Saint 
Michael, the other forcing its way through the street of 
Saint J oris. 'Santiago, Santiago! Espana, Espana ! a 
sangre, a carne, a fuego, i, sacco !' — Saint James, Spain, 
blood, flesh, fire, sack ! ! Such were the hideous cries 
which rang through every quarter of the city, as the 
savage horde advanced. Van Ende, with his German 
troops, had been stationed by the Marquis of Havr4 to 
defend the Saint Joris gate, but no sooner did the 
Spaniards under Vargas present themselves, than he 
deserted to them instantly with his whole force. United 
with the Spanish cavalry, these traitorous defenders of 
Antwerp dashed in pursuit of those who had only been 
faint-hearted. Thus the burghers saw themselves attacked 
by many of their friends, deserted by more. Whom wer 



John Motley. 223 

they to trust ? Nevertheless, Oberstein's Germans were 
brave and faithful, resisting to the last, and dying every 
man in his harness. The tide of battle flowed hither 
and thither, through every street and narrow lane. It 
poured along the magnificent Place de Meer, where 
there was an obstinate contest. In front of the famous 
Exchange, where, in peaceful hours five thousand 
merchants met daily to arrange the commercial affairs of 
Christendom, there was a determined rally, a savage 
slaughter. The citizens and faithful Germans, in this 
broader space, made a stand against their pursuers. The 
tesselated, marble pavement, the graceful, cloister-like 
arcades, ran red with blood. The ill-armed burghers 
faced their enemies, clad in complete panoply, but they 
could only die for their homes. The massacre at this 
point was enormous, the resistance at last overcome. 

" Meantime the Spanish cavalry had cleft its way 
through the city. On the side furthest removed from 
the castle, along the Horse-market, opposite the New- 
town, the states dragoons and the light horse of Beveren 
had been posted, and the flying masses of pursuers and 
pursued swept at last through this outer circle. Cham- 
pagny was already there. He essayed, as his last hope, 
to rally the cavalry for a final stand, but the effort was 
fruitless. Already seized by the panic, they had 
attempted to rush from the city through the gate of 
Eeker. It was locked. They then turned and fled 
towards the Red-gate, where they were met face to face 
by Don Pedro Tassis, who charged upon them with his 
dragoons. Retreat seemed hopeless. A horseman in 
complete armour, with lance in rest, was seen to leap 
from the'parapet of the outer wall into the moat below, 
whence, still on horseback, he escaped with life. 
Few were so fortunate. The confused host of fugitives 



2 24 Masters in History. 

and conquerors, Spaniards, Walloons, Germans, burghers, 
struggling, shouting, striking, cursing, dying, swayed 
hither and thither Hke a stormy sea. Along the spaci- 
ous Horse-market, the fugitives fled onward towards the 
quays. Many fell beneath the swords of the Spaniards, 
numbers were trodden to death by the hoofs of the 
horses, still greater multitudes were hunted into the 
Scheldt. Champagny, who had thought it possible, even 
at the last moment, to make a stand in the New-town, 
and to fortify the palace of the Hausa, saw himself 
deserted. With great daring and presence of mind he 
effected his escape to the fleet of the Prince of Orange 
in the river. The Marquis of Havre, of whom no deeds 
of valour of that eventful day have been recorded, was 
equally successful. The unlucky Oberstein, attempting 
to leap into a boat, missed his footing, and, oppressed 
with the weight of his armour, was drowned. 

" Meantime, while the short November day was fast 
declining, the combat still raged in the interior of the 
city. Various currents of conflict, forcing their separate 
way through many streets, had at last mingled in the 
Grande Place. Around this irregular, not very spacious 
square, stood the gorgeous Hotel de Ville, and the 
tall, many storied, fantastically-gabled, richly-decorated 
palaces of the guilds. Here a long struggle took place. 
It was terminated for a time by the cavalry of Vargas, 
who, arriving through the streets of Saint Joris, accom- 
panied by the traitor Van Ende, charged decisively into 
the melee. The masses were broken, but multitudes of 
armed men found refuge in the buildings, and every 
house became a fortress. From every window and bal- 
cony a hot fire was poured into the square, as, pent in 
a corner, the burghers stood at last at bay. It was diffi- 
cult to carry the houses by storm, but they were soon set 



John Motley. 225 

on fire. A large number of sutlers and other varlets had 
accompanied the Spaniards from the citadel, bringing 
torches and kindling materials for the express purpose of 
firing the town. With great dexterity these means were 
now employed, and in a brief interval the city-hall, and 
other edifices on the square, were in flames. The con- 
flagration spread with rapidity, house after house, street 
after street, taking fire. Nearly a thousand buildings in 
the most splendid and wealthy quarter of the city were 
soon in a blaze, and multitudes of human beings were 
burned with them. In the city-hall many were con- 
sumed, while others leapt from the windows to renew 
the combat below. In the street called the Canal au 
Sucre, immediately behind the Town-house, there was a 
fierce struggle, a horrible massacre. A crowd of burghers, 
grave magistrates, and such of the German soldiers as 
remained alive, still confronted the ferocious Spaniards. 
There, amid the flaming desolation, Goswyn Verreyck, 
the heroic margrave of the city, fought with the energy 
of hatred and despair. The burgomaster. Van der Meere, 
lay dead at his feet j senators, soldiers, citizens, fell fast 
around him, and he sank at last upon a heap of slain. 
With him efi"ectual resistance ended. The remaining 
combatants were butchered, or were slowly forced down- 
ward to perish in the Scheldt. Women, children, old 
men, were killed in countless numbers, and still, through 
all this havoc, directly over the heads of the struggling 
throng, suspended in mid-air above the din and smoke of 
the conflict, there sounded, every half-quarter of every 
hour, as if in gentle mockery, from the belfry of the 
cathedral, the tender and melodious chimes. 

" Never was there a more monstrous massacre, even 
in the blood-stained history of the Netherlands. It was 
estimated that, in the course of this and the two follow- 
(2) P 



2 26 Masters in History, 

ing days, not less than eight thousand human beings 
were murdered. The Spaniards seemed to have cast off 
even the vizard of humanity. Hell seemed emptied of . 
its fiends. Night fell upon the scene before the soldiers 
were masters of the city ; but worse horrors began after 
the contest was ended. This army of brigands had 
come hither with a definite, practical purpose, for it was 
not blood-thirst, nor lust, nor revenge, which had im- 
pelled them, but it was avarice, greediness for gold. For 
gold they had waded through all this blood and fire. 
Never had men more simplicity of purpose, more direct- 
ness in its execution. They had conquered their India 
at last ; its gold mines lay all before them, and every 
sword should open a shaft. Riot and rape might be de- 
ferred ; even murder, though congenial to their taste, 
was only subsidiary to their business. They had come 
to take possession of the city's wealth, and they set them- 
selves faithfully to accomplish their task. For gold, 
infants were dashed out of existence in their mother's 
arms ; for gold, parents were tortured in their children's 
presence ; for gold, brides were scourged to death before 
their husband's eyes. Of all deeds of darkness yet com- 
passed in the Netherlands, this was the worst. It was 
called the Spanish Fury, by which dread name it has been 
'i?:nown for ages."* 

Motley spent the winter of 1856-57 amongst his friends 
in Boston, and they were pleased to observe the serene, 
subdued, thoughtful manhood which had grown out of 
the eager, impulsive boyhood. His fame had only added 
to his modesty, and he wore his accomplishments lightly 
as a flower. The American people had the pedestal of 
the idol ready for him, "but he showed no desire to 
show himself upon it." In 1858 he returned to England, 

* " The Rise of the Dutch Republic," Part IV., Chapter V. 



John Motley. 227 

and his daughter, who became Lady Harcourt, says he 
enjoyed during his stay the society of Lord Lyndhurst, 
Lord and Lady CarHsle, Lady WilHam Russell, Lord and 
Lady Palmerston, Dean Milman, and many others. 

" The Rise of the Dutch Republic " is a complete 
book in , itself, but the design of the historian was to 
write a great work to be called " The Eighty Years' War 
for Liberty," of which it was only to form the first epoch. 
His plan was to take up the historical clue where he had 
left it in the Republic, and constitute the period from 
the death of William the Silent till the Twelve Years' 
Truce into a second epoch ; and then going on, from 
the recognition of Independence to the Peace of West- 
phalia ( 1 609-1 648), to embody the events of those years 
into a third epoch, with which his labours would con- 
clude, and after which he would " cease to scourge the 
public." The first part of this vast design was no sooner 
completed, than Motley immediately set himself to work 
to collect materials for his second epoch. Industrious as 
he had been before in the libraries of Europe, he was now 
more industrious than ever ; and by keeping his copyists 
continually at work, he was able to make more rapid 
progress than before. He felt his next part of his History 
must have particular value, as, " by special favour of the 
Belgian Government, he was allowed to read what no 
one else had ever been permitted to see." 

History is imperious in its demand on its writer. Clio 
will have no divided worship. Gibbon did nothing else 
than devote himself heart and soul to the " Decline and 
Fall." When Grote undertook the " History of Greece " 
he had to give up his business. Macaulay, when he 
began the " History of England," had to drop writing 
articles for the Edinburgh Review. And if this volume 
establishes one thing more than another, it is this, that 



2 28 Masters in History. 

our great masters in history have also been the greatest 
workers of their age. Men of genius as they were, they 
would have been nameless had they not applied them- 
selves Hke Titans to their tasks. One hardly knows 
whether to admire more the persistence and dogged per- 
severance with which they prosecuted their work, or the 
ability and scholarship they brought to its execution. In 
cases of emergency men can do very wonderful things : for 
a week or a month they may work with surpassing energy ; 
but the sight that is before us in these lives we have 
sketched is the sight of men working at the very highest 
pitch, and putting out for long years on end such in- 
tellectual and physical efforts as would leave ordinary 
men completely exhausted in a few days, or in the course 
of a few weeks at most. Nor can it be said that this 
supreme impulse comes in any way from the love of 
gain. No historian ever kept that as an end in view j no 
historian ever needed to write for money ; and only one 
or two have kept it in view even as a secondary con- 
sideration. In truth, every great history is a testimony 
to the love of knowledge and intellectual exercise for 
their own sakes, and is a witness to that consuming, un- 
selfish ardour which, in a more or less degree, every 
noble study inspires. 

In powers of continued labour, Motley takes rank with 
those we have already named. So soon as the " Dutch 
Republic " was through the press, he was started on his 
second epoch; and in i860 he gave to the world two 
volumes of the " United Netherlands." In the second 
chapter of that work the author gives us some insight 
into those delights which thrill the heart of the historian 
as he pores over the musty records of the past : — 
" Moreover, as already indicated, the envoys, and those 
whom they represented, had not the same means of 



John Motley. 229 

arriving at a result as are granted to us. Thanks to the 
liberaHty of many modern Governments of Europe, the 
archives where the State secrets of the buried centuries 
have so long mouldered, are now open to the student of 
history. To him who has patience and industry many 
mysteries are thus revealed which no political sagacity 
or critical acumen could have divined. He leans over 
the shoulder of Philip the Second at his writing-table, as 
the king spells patiently out, with cypher key in hand, 
the most concealed hieroglyphics of Parma, or Guise, or 
Mendosa. He reads the secrets of 'Fabius'"^ as that 
cunctative Roman scrawls his marginal apostilles on 
each despatch; he pries into all the stratagems of 
Camillus, Hortensius, Mucins, Julius, Tullius, and the 
rest of those ancient heroes who lent their names to the 
diplomatic masqueraders of the sixteenth century; he 
enters the cabinet of the deeply-pondering Burghley, 
and takes from the most private drawer the memoranda 
which record that minister's unutterable doubtings; he 
pulls from the dressing-gown folds of the stealthy, softly- 
gliding Walsingham the last secret which he has picked 
from the Emperor's pigeon-holes or the Pope's pocket ; 
and which, not Hatton, nor Buckhurst, nor Leicester, 
nor the Lord Treasurer, is to see — nobody but Elizabeth 
herself; he sits invisible at the most secret council of 
the Nassaus, and Barneveld, and Buys, or pores with 
Farnese over coming victories, and vast schemes of uni- 
versal conquest ; he reads the latest bit of scandal, the 
minutest characteristic of king or minister, chronicled by 
the gossiping Venetians for the edification of the Forty ; 
and, after all this prying and eavesdropping, having seen 
the cross-purposes, the bribings, the windings, the fencings 
in the dark, he is not surprised if those who were syste- 
* The name usually assigned to Philip himself. 



230 Masters in History. 

matically deceived did not always arrive at correct con- 
clusions." 

In i860 Motley took up house at No. 31 Hertford 
Street, May Fair. But while he sat down to devote 
himself to the further continuation of his history of the 
Low Countries, the voice of civil contention coming 
across the Atlantic from his native land called away his 
attention from the events of the past to the more engross- 
ing events of the present — from being a calm spectator 
of the affairs of the sixteenth century, to be an eager 
partizan in those of the nineteenth. So soon as the 
mutterings of civil discord were heard, he wrote two 
elaborate letters to the Times, laying bare the weighty 
issues at stake in the struggle, and in 1861 he returned 
to America. Aware of the service he had rendered to his 
country by his efforts in the Times, soon after his landing 
he was appointed by Lincoln, Minister to Austria. He 
at once repaired to Vienna, and this post he held for 
the space of six years. While Austrian Ambassador he 
had many delicate offices to perform ; but the most deli- 
cate of all was the conducting of certain negotiations 
connected with the affairs of Mexico. The United 
States saw fit to take up a strong stand on the subject, and 
Motley had to convey to Count Mensdorff the American 
ultimatum. He was in Vienna when Denmark stood 
alone against the combined powers of Austria and 
Prussia. When the war was done Bismarck came to 
arrange terms of peace with the Emperor, and the 
occasion gave the historian and the politician ample 
opportunities of renewing the friendship of college 
days. 

During these Vienna years literature was in abeyance. 
Motley's whole soul was absorbed in the conflict in 
which his country was involved. Confessing they were 



John Motley. 231 

living over again the days of the Dutchmen or the 
seventeenth-century EngHshmen, all else seemed to him 
"but leather and prunella." "Everything around his 
inkstand, within a radius of a thousand miles/' was to 
the eager historian, who dipped his pen into it, of the 
deepest interest. In certain letters to his American 
friends, he said, the question they had to settle was, 
*' Shall slavery die or the Great Republic ? " and it was 
astounding to him " there could be two opinions in the 
free States as to the answer." " The great Republic and 
slavery cannot both survive. We have been defied to 
mortal combat, and yet we are afraid to strike." It was 
in vain he sighed, " Dear me ! I wish I could get back 
to the sixteenth and seventeenth century." To his 
ardent spirit the events of the nineteenth were too 
engrossing. The struggle was one he could not look 
on coldly, yet while all his speech and action were the 
speech and action of the most genuine patriotism, it is 
strange to think he was not exempt from the shafts of 
malevolence. 

No one doubts there is before the American people 
a glorious future \ but the fact that a man like Motley, 
a man whose sterling integrity and uprightness were 
vindicated by his successors in the offices which he filled, 
was twice humiliated, at the instance of unknown 
calumniators, by the American government, is not one 
of those things which will hasten the realization of that 
future, but will rather retard its coming. That the 
government of one of the greatest nations on the earth 
can stoop to the foul charges of anonymity, that they 
have an ear for the whisper of malice and envy, must 
ever enter as an element of trouble into our every 
estimate of American political life and institutions. A 
government, like an individual, when it speaks no 



232 Masters in History. 

slander, only does half its duty— the other and equally 
important half is not to listen to it. 

The facts which brought about Motley's resignation as 
Austrian Ambassador were simply these. Andrew John- 
son, the President of the United States, received a 
letter dated Paris, October 23, 1866, and signed 
" George W. M'Crackin (!) of New York." This letter, 
under the cover of a criticism of certain Massachusetts 
affairs, heaped on Motley the lowest abuse, accused him 
of speaking "malignantly" and "offensively" of the 
Andrew Johnson above named, and said that he had 
called Mr Seward " a thorough flunkey " and some terms 
of that sort. Had this letter been received by an 
English official, very probably the next minute after it 
had been read it would have made a contribution to the 
ashes of the grate. Or if it had been saved from this 
fate, equally rapidly would it have found its way into the 
hands of a detective, and without doubt a letter would 
have been sent telling the gentleman aspersed that eaves- 
droppers were about, and " venomous familiars " were 
crawling about his person, and so he had better be on 
his guard. Andrew Johnson did not act as it seems to us 
an Enghsh government official would have done. The 
letter passed into the hands of Mr Seward, the Secretary 
of State. This gentleman, whether or not by the order 
of the President does not appear, sent to Motley not 
asking him to confess or deny the accusations of 
M'Crackin, but putting to him various questions suggested 
by the Paris document. Seward's letter was both an 
accusation and an insult. The accusation Motley 
answered by denying it, the insult he repudiated by 
at once sending in his resignation. The historian 
" blushed that such charges^ could have been uttered ; he 
was deeply wounded that Mr Seward could have Hstened 
o such falsehood." 



John Motley. 233 

No man of the name of M'Crackin had Motley ever 
seen or known. Hohiies would give us to understand 
that he was an " interviewer " of the American Press, 
who, getting near his person, had taken advantage of his 
hour of expansion. He says truly, "No man is safe 
whose unguarded threshold the mischief-making ques- 
tioner has crossed. The more unsuspecting, the more 
frank, the more courageous, the more social is the sub- 
ject of his vivisection, the more easily does he get at 
his vital secrets, if he has any to be extracted. No man 
is safe if the hearsay reports of his conversation are 
to be given to the public without his own careful 
revision." While one acknowledges the truth of Holmes' 
words, one still may regard with more complacency such 
exhibitions of malevolence. The evil-spirited enjoy their 
hours of triumph over the finer and opener natures, but 
they are soon found out, and come to be regarded as of 
all God's creatures the most wretched and the most 
miserable. They, too, have their reward. 

But this is not all. When Mr Seward received Motley's 
resignation, he sent a letter to him declining to accept it. 
What became of this letter nobody ever knew, but there 
is every reason to believe that President Johnson sent a 
telegraphic order to a despatch agent and arrested it 
before it came into Motley's hands. Thus, by a course of 
action singularly base and dishonourable throughout. 
Motley's long and successful services at the court of 
Vienna were brought to a close, and he was sent out with 
the stigma upon him that he had betrayed the secrets 
and traduced the character of the highest members of the 
United States Government. 

Motley's humiliation was, no doubt, ill enough to bear, 
and having his ardent nature, it was well for him that he 
had a work to fall back upon in the prosecution of which 



234 Masters in History. 

he could forget the unhandsome deaHngs of his govern- 
ment and the maHce of his unseen and secret enemies. In 
1868 he was able to publish the two concluding volumes 
of the "History of the United Netherlands." These latter 
volumes, if they were less interesting than the former, were 
not composed with less masterly care, nor were they the 
product of less diligent search. If they contain nothing 
to equal the nineteenth chapter of the second volume, 
that is because they had to chronicle nothing to compare 
with the building, sailing, and destruction of the Spanish 
Armada. If we find their pages colder it is not that the 
pictures are less real, but because we have not the same 
interest in the men and women whose portraits he draws 
and whose deeds he narrates. In the second instalment 
of the ''United Netherlands" there are no sieges like those 
of Leyden, Antwerp and Maestricht, no names so dear to 
our hearts or come so readily to our lips as these — William 
the Silent, Egmont, Elizabeth, Sir Philip Sidney, Leicester, 
and Amy Robsart. 

To the faults of Motley's style we have not alluded, 
nor do they require other than the very briefest notice. 
To the popular reader it may be said to be a style wholly 
without faults. Everything being plain and simple, but 
lucid and glowing, ordinary minds are pleased, they are 
carried so rapidly along ; and with new sensations coming 
to them with the turning of every leaf, they care not to 
pause to examine the narrative with a critical eye. 
Those, however, who stop now and again to examine the 
historian's workmanship'are bound to notice the occasional 
manifestation of, as it were, an animal glee, where the 
historian in his impatience seems to break loose from the 
trammels of his subject. There are lights and shades made 
lighter and darker than need be, evidently with the view 
of presenting a striking contrast. There are also 



John Motley. 235 

scintillating images and twinkling epithets that seem 
more to answer the requirements of Hterary effect than 
historical verity. There are paragraphs and expressions 
that put one in mind of Harvard and "Morton's Hope." 
On the whole, however, it must be said his exercises in the 
novel stood him in the very best stead. Intrigue and 
plot he managed not the worse, but the better, because of 
his early efforts in romance. No historian makes his 
men and women do their part with less jostling than 
Motley, as no historian has been able to give the 
appearance of greater unity and of culminating interest 
to the body of his work. 

There is nothing easier than to trace in Motley's work 
the hand of the novelist, but that it was a help and not a 
hindrance such passages as these can well testify: "It 
was a pompous spectacle, that midsummer night on those 
narrow seas. The moon, which was at the full, was 
rising calmly upon a scene of anxious expectation — would 
she not be looking, by the morrow's night, upon a 
subjugated ^England, a re-enslaved Holland — upon the 
downfall of civil and religious liberty ? Those ships of 
Spain, which lay there with their banners waving in the 
moonlight, discharging salvoes of anticipated triumph, 
and filling the air with strains of insolent music, would 
they not, by daybreak, be moving straight to their 
purpose, bearing the conquerors of the world to the 
scene of their cherished hopes ? 

" As the twilight deepened, the moon became totally 
obscured, dark cloud-masses spread over the heavens, 
the sea grew black, distant thunder rolled, and the sob of 
an approaching tempest became distinctly audible. Such 
indications of a westerly gale were not encouraging to 
those cumbrous vessels, with the treacherous quick- 
sands of Flanders under their lee. 



236 Masters in History, 

"An hour past midnight it was so dark that it was 
difficult for the most practised eye to pierce far into the 
gloom. But a faint drip of oars now struck the ears of 
the Spaniards as they watched from the decks. A few 
moments afterwards the sea became suddenly luminous, 
and six flaming vessels appeared at a slight distance, 
bearing steadily down upon them, before the wind and 
tide." ^ 

Here again is a paragraph, — a complete paragraph; 
can we read it without thinking of " Merry Mount," or 
that within some book with yellow boards we have met 
it before : — " Winter, standing side by side with the 
Lord-Admiral on the deck of the little Ark Royal, gazed 
for the first time on those enormous galleons and 
galleys with which his companion was already sufficiently 
familiar." f 

Immediately on the publication of his history, Motley 
once more crossed the Atlantic, and established himself 
in Boston. The people were on the eve of making a 
Presidential Election. Motley, on the invitation of the 
Parker Fraternity, gave a great electioneering speech. 
He spoke in warm eulogy of Grant, and of a govern- 
ment with which he was soon to be at as great enmity 
as he had been with the government of Johnson. 

Like the Times letters, the speech was not without its 
effect. Soon after the election of General Grant, Motley 
was appointed American Ambassador to England. It 
was the highest diplomatic appointment the government 
had to bestow. Whether or not certain presentiments, 
the taint left by the Vienna resignation, still hung about 
him, we cannot tell, but his appointment brought no 
gladness to his heart, and he even accepted it with mis- 

* " United Netherlands," vol. ii., pp. 485, 491. 
t " United Netherlands," vol. ii., p. 486." 



John Motley. 237 

giving of spirit. We find him writing to a dear friend — 
a friend now acknowledged on both sides of the Atlantic 
as the first of American essayists : — " I feel anything but 
exultation at present, rather the opposite sensation. I 
feel that I am placed higher than I deserve, and, at the 
same time, that I am taking greater responsibilites than 
ever were assumed by me before. Yoil will be indulgent 
to my mistakes and shortcomings — and who can expect 
to avoid them ? But the world will be cruel, and times 
are threatening. I shall do my best — but the best may 
be poor enough — and keep ' a heart for every fate.' " 

The history of Motley's English diplomatic appoint- 
ment is another painful page in American political life. 
The facts concerning his recall are few and simple. 

When Reverdy Johnson was minister at the Court of 
St James, he drew out an Alabama Treaty, which was 
rejected by the Senate, and which also made the Senate 
think proper to recall their ambassador. Mr Motley had 
the friendship of Sumner; he was nominated without 
opposition, and his appointment was ratified by the Ameri- 
can Senate. When the new minister arrived in Liver- 
pool he was very cordially welcomed by the English 
people. In London his worth and abilites were known, 
and he was regarded with sentiments of deference and 
respect. Settled in the capital, he soon had an interview 
with Lord Clarendon, then Foreign Secretary of State. 
The conversation with the English minister the American 
ambassador reported in full to his own government. The 
conversation was generally approved of. Some words 
were thought to be stronger than necessary, and one point 
was thought to be not absolutely in accordance with the 
President's views. The government suggested these 
things to Motley in the friendliest way, after receiving his 
report of his meeting with Lord Clarendon, and they 



238 Masters in History. 

concluded their despatch by repeating again their ap- 
proval of their ambassador's exertions. Here ends the 
first complaint. 

The second complaint was to the effect that the mini- 
ster had shown minutes of this conversation to Lord 
Clarendon, to obtain his confirmation of their correctness, 
and he had not mentioned this circumstance to his 
government till some weeks after it had taken place. 

So soon as communication was made to Motley by 
Mr Fish, then Secretary of State, that part of the con- 
versation he had with Lord Clarendon was not approved 
of, he immediately sent a written communication to his 
lordship explaining the exact position of his government, 
and using FisHs identical language. 

This was all. No one could have conceived there 
was anything to find fault with. All that had taken 
place amounted just to nothing. A mistake had been 
made and corrected, and the conduct of the ambassador 
generally approved. There is nothing in Motley's con- 
duct but might have been soon forgotten, and, indeed, it 
was like to be forgotten. A year and more rolled past, 
the ambassador worked hard and conscientiously, and 
there was nothing heard about that first interview. 

Only one thing had occurred in the twelve months 
worthy of note. The position of Motley the govern- 
ment had objected to as somewhat strong, they them- 
selves ordered Modey to take up. The expressions 
Motley used to Lord Clarendon, which they had found 
fault with at first, they now authorized him to use. If 
he had made a mistake at first, the government now came 
forv/ard and endorsed his mistake. There was not, 
therefore, the remotest shadow of difference between 
Motley and his government. They were one. If ever 
man seemed secure in the position he occupied, it 



John Motley. 239 

was Motley in his position as American minister in 
England. 

When all was going quietly, when the political atmo- 
sphere was apparently without a cloud, when Motley 
felt himself as he said, thoroughly established in the 
confidence of his government and the friendship of the 
best people in England, in the July of 1870 he got a 
letter from Fish asking him to resign. Perhaps he 
thought he had been hasty in resigning at Vienna, 
perhaps he thought President Grant would write a letter 
that would not be intercepted this time. The letter 
never came. In November he was recalled. 

When Motley got the letter asking him to resign, he 
was completely taken aback. It fell on him like a 
thunderbolt. The historian was also the more surprised 
that the secretary of the American Republic should have 
couched it in terms of gross and undignified insult. The 
whole matter was unaccountable and mysterious in the 
highest degree to the EngHsh minister. Had there been 
any outstanding reason, had he ever acted an under- 
hand part, had he ever made any palpable blunder, had 
he ever bartered the interests of his government for the 
ends of private ambition, Motley would have been the 
first of men to have acknowledged his weakness, and 
acquiesced in his recall ; but as no such reasons could be 
assigned, the scholar felt his humiliation deeply, and the 
blow fell heavily on the " newly-healed wound of malice." 

The reasons given for certain actions often, instead of 
paUiating, aggravate the offence. The reason of Motley's 
recall makes the injustice that was done him doubly 
black. Mr Sumner was a power in the American Senate, 
and to his influence the historian largely owed his place 
at the EngHsh court. On an important San Domingo 
question, a treaty had been drawn up which the Senate 



240 Masters in History. 

rejected. President Grant's vanity was wounded, and 
Sumner and he came to an open rupture. The treaty 
was rejected on the 30th day of June, the quarrel took 
place on the same day, and the very next day the note 
demanding Motley's resignation was issued. Sumner 
was a power which Grant could not injure ; the only way 
he could stab him was by humiliating his friend. Grant 
said bitterly, "Sumner promised me he would vote for 
the treaty. But when it was before the Senate, he did 
all he could to beat it." It was a rough, soldier-Hke way 
to pay off his score against Sumner by recaUing the English 
minister. 

It was all too apparent. The President and Fish had 
to vindicate themselves in some way, and they went 
away and sought a reason for their action in the long 
forgotten Motley-Clarendon conversation, calling their 
minister bad names over again for a course of conduct 
which they themselves had ratified. Drowning men 
catch at straws, but the straws, all the same, do not save 
their lives. Motley did not care to have the matter 
debated in his life. He bent to the blow, although he 
knew he would never recover from its effects. After the 
historian was gone, the whole question was brought up 
and put definitely before the American people. Grant of 
course repudiated acting a maUcious part ; but acquitted 
by his lips, we can hardly fail to mark from his words he 
was condemned by his conscience. " Is it proper to say 
of me," said Grant, " that I killed Motley, or that I made 
war upon Sumner, for not supporting the annexation of 
San Domingo ? But if I dare to answer that I removed 
Motley from the highest considerations of duty as an 
executive ; and if I presume to say that he made a 
mistake in his office which made him no longer useful to 
the country ; if Fish has the temerity to hint that 



John Motley. 241 

Sumner's temper was so unfortunate that business rela- 
tions with him became impossible,— we are slandering 
the dead." 

Altogether, it is a sad, disheartening story. The author 
of "Morton's Hope" dreamt of " a statesmanship that was 
to reorganise and govern the world," but the dream 
faded, and the old diplomatist found that the gold coins 
which the dervise had given him in youth, had turned at 
last into withered leaves in his hands. 

As English minister, the part which Motley had to 
perform was of the most difficult kind. The negotiations 
he had to conduct required far more than ordinary 
delicacy. The Alabama claims were repudiated by the 
mass of the EngHsh people. Every mention of them gave 
rise to exasperation. But never once did the popular 
feeHng — a feeling on such occasions not usually marked 
by the utmost discrimination — lay anything to the charge 
of the United States' diplomatist; and when he was 
recalled, the Daily News spoke of him in the following 
terms :— " We are violating no confidence in saying that 
all the hopes of Mr Motley's official residence in England 
have been amply fulfilled, and that the announcement of 
his unexpected and unexplained recall was received 
with extreme astonishment and unfeigned regret. The 
vacancy he leaves cannot possibly be filled by a minister 
more sensitive to the honour of his government, more 
attentive to the interests of his country, and more capable 
of uniting the most vigorous performance of his public 
duties with the high-bred courtesy and conciliatory tact 
and temper that make those duties easy and successful. 
Mr Motley's successor will find his mission wonderfully 
facilitated by the firmness and discretion that have pre- 
sided over the conduct of American affairs in this country 



242 Masters in History, 

during too brief a term, too suddenly and unaccountably 
concluded." 

Motley's recall from the English mission — a mission 
in which he had taken both pride and pleasure — inflicted 
a wound on his sensitive nature from which he never 
completely recovered. It says, however, much for his 
resolution and literary devotedness that, immediately 
his connection with his government had been severed, 
he wasted not a moment in useless repining, but at once 
set to work again. The conception and general outline 
of his " third epoch " now rose before him, quickening 
all his endeavours, and calling forth all his energies. From 
London he repaired to the Hague, and began his 
researches in earnest. The "Dutch Republic" had 
already been translated into the languages of the Nether- 
lands and been read with the keen'est interest. Vast 
masses of information had been gathered by laborious 
German scholars, but here they saw the facts embodied 
in a manner they had never seen before ; they marked 
in the history something of the enthusiasm that had 
fired the hearts of their forefathers, and the whole people 
were sensible they owed a deep debt of gratitude to the 
American writer. When, therefore, Motley repaired 
to the Hague, the Queen of the Netherlands but gave 
expression to the feeHng of the country, by the personal 
courtesy she showed to the historian : she made ready 
a house for him, providing him with a large library, and 
was solicitous about his every comfort. He also enjoyed 
the patronage of the king, and the respect of all Dutch 
scholars. M. Groen van Prinsterer, although a man of 
colossal erudition, looked upon the American with 
feelings of the utmost deference and respect. Although 
Prinsterer was a man of unbounded application, it is 
said that Motley's powers of work surprised even him. 
The historian used the facilities placed at his command 



John Motley. 243 

to collect a vast mass of materials for a work which he 
proposed to publish as an introduction to his third epoch. 
At the Hague all his severely studious habits came back 
to him, and he worked at his " Life and Death of John 
of Barneveld " with as much energy as he had done at 
the " Dutch Republic " and " The United Netherlands." 
His daughter, Lady Harcourt, gives us a very interesting 
account of his habits of study : — " He generally rose 
early, the hour varying somewhat at different parts of his 
life, according to his work and health. Sometimes when 
much absorbed by literary labour he would rise before 
seven, often lighting his own fire, and with a cup of tea or 
coffee \mting until the family breakfast hour, after which his 
work was immediately resumed, and he usually sat over 
his writing-table until late in the afternoon, when he 
would take a short walk. His dinner hour was late, and 
he rarely worked at night. During the early years of his 
literary studies he led a Hfe of great retirement. Later, 
after the publication of the "Dutch Republic" and dur- 
ing the years of official place, he was much in society in 
England, Austria, and Holland. He enjoyed social life, 
and particularly driving out, keenly, but was very 
moderate and simple in all his personal habits, and for 
many years before his death had entirely given up smok- 
ing. His work, when not in his own library, was in the 
Archives of the Netherlands, Brussels, Paris, the English 
State Paper Office, and the British Museum, where he 
made his own researches ; patiently and laboriously con- 
sulting original manuscripts, and reading masses of corre- 
spondence, from which he afterwards caused copies to 
be made, and where he worked for many consecutive hours 
a-day. After his material had been thus painfully and 
toilfully amassed, the writing of his own story was always 
done at home, and his mind, having digested the 



244 Masters in History, 

necessary matter, always poured itself forth in writing so 
copiously that his revision was chiefly devoted to reduc- 
ing the over-abundance. He never shrank from any of 
the drudgery of preparation, but I think his own part of 
the work was sheer pleasure to him." 

From the Hague, in 1872, Motley returned to London. 
The health of his wife, and particularly his own, im- 
peratively required a change. In the autumn of that 
year they arrived at Bournemouth, and on the very day 
of their arrival a very serious illness overtook the histo- 
rian from the rupture of one of the vessels on the lungs. 
In some weeks he recovered sufficiently to revise his 
Hague manuscript, but he was not long at his desk when 
he was struck down by the first of a number of attacks 
of the head, " which robbed him of all power of work, 
although his intellect remained untouched." 

In 1874, notwithstanding much illness, he was able to 
give to the world his work on Barneveld. In the third 
and fourth volume of the " United Netherlands " there 
had been a falling away in the spirit of the narrative, but 
in Barneveld he took up the quill with which he had 
written the " Dutch RepubHc ; " his primary historical 
enthusiasm came back to him ; his old spirit possessed 
him ; and he filled in his outline of the face of Barneveld 
with as bold yet accurate a brush as he had painted his 
famous portrait of William the Silent. Many may not 
think so, but he thought the two heroes like each other. 
In the first chapter the historian says : — " There can be 
no doubt that if William the Silent was the founder of 
the independence of the United Provinces, Barneveld 
was the founder of the Commonwealth itself. Had that 
country, of which he was so long the first citizen, main- 
tained until our day the same proportional position among 
the empires of Christendom as it held in the seventeenth 



yohn Motley, 245 

century, the name of John of Barneveld would have 
perhaps been as famiHar to all men as it is at this 
moment to nearly every inhabitant of the Netherlands." 

The "Life of Barneveld" threw Motley open anew 
to the charge of importing into historical writing an 
American spirit. Blackwood charged him with being a 
member of the " fast " school, after the publication of 
the " Dutch Republic." This charge, however, it has to 
be said, was made more in good humour than in any 
bitterness of spirit. The complaint that the historian 
was a devotee of the rollicking, rattling style might have, 
with some show of reason, been preferred anew from the 
pages of " Barneveld j" but in reality it was hardly 
named. The critics were lost in admiration of "that 
subtle alchemy of the brain which had enabled him to 
produce out of dull, crabbed, and often illegible state 
papers, the vivid, graphic, and sparkling narrative which 
he has given to the world." 

A question purely theological, if it has no bearing on 
church government, seldom causes amongst the people 
much interest in this country ; but when we turn to the 
pages of Motley we see how terribly the whole Dutch 
population was excited over certain speculations in 
divinity.^ " In burghers' mansions, peasants' cottages, 
mechanics' back - parlours ; on board herring-smacks, 
canal-boats, and East Indiamen ; in shops, counting- 
rooms, farm-yards, guard-rooms, ale-houses ; on the ex- 
change, in the tennis-court, on the wall ; at banquets, at 
burials, christenings, or bridals; wherever and when- 
ever human creatures met each other,— there was ever 
to be found the fierce wrangle of Remonstrant and 
Contra-Remonstrant, the hissing of red-hot theological 
rhetoric, the pelting of hostile texts. The blacksmith's 
iron cooled on the anvil, the tinker dropped a kettle half 
mended, the broker left a bargain unclenched, the 



246 Masters in History, 

Scheveningen fisherman, in his wooden shoes, forgot the 
cracks in his pinkie, while each paused to hold high con- 
verse with friend or foe on fate, free-will, or absolute 
foreknowledge; losing himself in wandering mazes whence 
there was no issue. Province against province, city 
against city, family against family — it was one vast scene 
of bickering, denunciation, heart-burnings, mutual ex- 
communication and hatred." 

It is curious to notice how, in writing the biography of 
another, the biographer often also writes his own. Every 
biography is to some extent an autobiography, the indivi- 
dual feelings and experiences of a writer creep into his 
narrative before he is aware. While he thinks he is 
looking with the eyes of the man of whom he is writing, 
he is in reality looking with his own ; while he thinks he 
is gazing on the heart of another individual, he is but 
looking into his own breast. The motives he seeks to 
analyse are frequently but the motions of his own mind 
— the powers that have set, not another, but himself a 
working. The author and his hero are the two lives 
that mingle together, more or less, in every biography. 
By an acromatic process light is uninfluenced by the 
medium through which it passes, but every life takes 
more or less of its form and colour from the mind of the 
individual that undertakes to estimate it. The life of 
Johnson is to a large extent the life of Boswell ; and in 
'' John of Barneveld," we find much which seems to us 
to speak in no vague way of the English minister of the 
United States, and the treatment he received at the hands of 
his government. When Motley wrote the following'he was 
no doubt writing biography, but it appears to us he was 
also making a contribution to autobiography: — ''Nor was 
the Envoy at first desirious of remaining. Nevertheless 
he yielded reluctantly to Bameveld's request, that he 



John Motley. 247 

should, for the time at least, remain at his post. Later 
on, as the intrigues against him began to unfold them- 
selves, and his faithful services were made use of at 
home to blacken his character and procure his removal, 
he refused to resign, as to do so would be to play into 
the hands of his enemies, and by interference, at least, 
accuse himself of infidelity to his trust. It is no wonder 
that the Ambassador was galled to the quick by the out- 
rage which those concerned in the government were 
seeking to put upon him. How could an honest man 
fail to be overwhelmed with rage and anguish at being 
dishonoured before the world by his masters for scrupu- 
lously doing his duty, and for maintaining the rights and 
dignity of his own country ? He knew that the charges 
were but pretexts, that the motives of his enemies were 
as base as the intrigues themselves, but he also knew 
that the world sides with the government against the 
individual, and that a man's reputation is rarely strong 
enough to maintain itself unsullied in a foreign land 
when his own government stretches forth its hand not to 
shield, but to stab him. '■ I know,' said Aerssens, ' that this 
plot has been woven partly in Holland and partly here 
by good correspondence, in order to drive me from my 
post with disreputation. But as I have discovered this 
accurately, I have resolved to offer my masters the con- 
tinuation of my humble service for such time and under 
such conditions as they may think good to prescribe. I 
prefer forcing my natural and private inclinations to 
giving an opportunity for the ministers of this kingdom 
to discredit us, and to my enemies to succeed in injuring 
me, and by fraud and malice to force me from my post. 
My enemies have misrepresented my actions, and my 
language as passionate, exaggerated, mischievous, but I 
have no passion except for the service of my superiors.' " 



248 Masters in History. 

The following passage is also of interest : — " All 
history shows that the brilliant soldier is apt to have 
the advantage, in a struggle for popular affection and 
applause, over the statesman, however consummate. 
The great battles and sieges of the Prince had been on 
a world's theatre, and on their issue had frequently de- 
pended, or seemed to depend, the very existence of the 
nation. The labours of the statesman, on the contrary, 
had been comparatively secret. His noble orations and 
arguments had been spoken with closed doors to assem- 
blies of colleagues — rather envoys than senators — . . . 
while his vast labours in directing both the internal ad- 
ministration, and especially the foreign affairs of the com 
monwealth, had been, by their very nature, as secret as 
they were perpetual and enormous." 

The year that saw the publication of the " Life and 
Death of Barneveld " closed darkly for the historian. On 
the last day of the year his wife was taken from him. 
The blow was one which would have been sufficient to 
have prostrated him at any time, but he was ill fitted to 
stand it now. Its effects he never recovered. Lady 
Harcourt observes : — '' From that day it seems to me 
that his life may be summed up in two words — patient 
waiting. Never for one hour did her spirit leave him, 
and he strove to follow its leading for the short and evil 
days left, and the hope of the Hfe beyond. I think I 
have never watched quietly and reverently the traces of 
one personal character remaining so strongly impressed 
on another nature." 

Motley's active life was now done. The pen he could 
ply so deftly for hours together, he could hardly now use 
to scrawl the briefest of notes. The brain would not 
work as it used to do, and paralysis had deprived his 
hand of its cunning. The great third epoch was now 



John Motley. 249 

an unattainable ambition. Not having finished his task, 
yet is he wholly without blame. Rather is it to his credit 
that he did so much. He was a man who had before him 
every inducement to spend a life of easy gaiety. There 
was that in him which would have made him eagerly 
welcomed in every drawing-room. Every evening could 
he have spent in Boston society, and the small hours of 
every morning with jovial boon-companions. He might 
have been a man of consideration in his locality, the 
leader of a poHte clique, the hero of a coterie. His posi- 
tion was a temptation to him to forego large designs, to 
shrink from laborious undertakings ; to be content with 
the society of the clubs, and the reputation of a billiard 
player. To the thousands of clever young men, born 
with the appliances of refinement and indulgence in their 
hands, and who run the risk of losing every manly ambi- 
tion in a solid content with trivial dissipations, the life of 
Motley offers a stimulating example. He had a heart 
above gilded frippery and dressed-up uselessness, and he 
valued his works not as they flattered his vanity, but as 
they tended to the lifting up of human life, and the pro- 
gress of the race. 

Motley's life was not wholly successful; no life is. In 
a contest with malice and envy, he got the worst of it by 
far ; but, if walking on a public way, he was wounded by 
bullets shot from behind the hedges of power or anonym- 
ity, he cannot be blamed for failure in a journey which 
jealousy would not allow him to perform. He was not 
the kind of man to succeed as an American politician, 
but this does not say the less for the man. His was a 
mind that lived " remote from the trading world of cau- 
cus managers." His dispirited retirement from his diplo- 
matic career will not damage him in the eyes of the com- 
ing generations of American citizens ; for when the names 



250 Masters in History. 

of those that buzzed about his path, and stung when they 
could, are forgotten, these generations will continue to 
prize the name of Motley as one of the greatest ornaments 
of their literary history. 

After the death of his wife, he once again visited 
America, and he spent the autumn of 1875 at Nahant, a 
watering-place in the neighbourhood of Boston. Those 
who met him there tell how his thoughts used to wander 
back to her who had been the loved companion of his 
life j they tell also how the formerly springy step had 
grown heavy, and the tall, straight form sadly drooped. 
In 1876 he was back again in England. Sir William 
Gull was his medical adviser, and in him he put the 
utmost confidence. Sir William writes concerning a 
visit he paid him on one occasion : — " It was plain how 
much his point of view of the whole course and relation 
of things had changed. His mind was the last to dog- 
matize on any subject. There was a candid and child- 
like desire to know, with an equal confession of the 
incapacity of the human intellect. I wish I could recall 
the absolute expressions he used, but the sense was that 
which has been so well stated by Hooker in concluding 
an exhortation against the pride of the human intellect, 
where he remarks : ' Dangerous it were for the feeble 
brain of man to wade far into the doings of the Most 
High ; whom although to know be life, and joy to make 
mention of His Name, yet our soundest knowledge is to 
know that we know Him, not indeed as He is, neither 
can know Him : and our safest eloquence concerning 
Him is our silence, when we confess without confession 
that His glory is inexplicable. His greatness above our 
capacity and reach. He is above, and we upon earth j 
therefore it behoveth our words to be wary and few ! ' " 

At the close of his life, particularly during those years 



John Motley. 251 

of '■' patient waiting," Motley's thoughts turned to Him 
who directs the processes which history records, and is 
surely, though mysteriously, bringing all the purposes of 
the ages — purposes that seem to our poor human vision 
so tangled and interlaced — to blessed issues. All his Hfe 
he had been dealing with the facts of history, but he 
now busied his mind by trying to spell out its philosophy. 
He made rapid progress in his new. exercise, coming 
soon to perceive that those puzzling ramifications of 
faction and intrigue, over the unravelling of which he had 
spent so much thought, were clear as the day to Him in 
whom is no darkness at all. 

Motley had been long looking for his departure. On 
the 29th of May, 1877, as if death had been the convey- 
ance of a friend he heard approaching, the historian said : 
*'It has come, it has come;" then his spirit passed, 
leaving " his face beautiful and calm, without a trace of 
suffering or illness." 

Motley was buried beside his wife in Kensal Green 
Cemetery. It was his wish that, besides the dates of his 
birth and death, only this text, which he had chosen, 
should be carved on his tombstone : — 

" In God is lights and in Htm is no darkness at all^ 

So soon as the historian was gone, both countries — 
the country of his birth, and the country in which he 
had found a grave — were eager in bearing testimony to 
their appreciation of his work and worth. Dean Stanley, 
in the course of his funeral sermon preached in West- 
minster Abbey, said : — " We sometimes ask what room 
or place is left in the crowded temple of Europe's fame 
for one of the Western world to occupy. But a sufficient 
answer is given in the work which was reserved to be 
accomplished by him who has just departed. So long 



252 Masters in History, 

as the tale of the greatness of the house of Orange, of 
the siege of Leyden, of the tragedy of Barneveld, interests 
mankind, so long will Holland be indissolubly connected 
with the name of Motley, in that union of the ancient 
culture of Europe with the aspirations of America, which 
was so remarkable in the ardent, laborious, soaring soul 
that has passed away." 

In the land of his birth, Bryant sang of him as follows, 
— but alas ! death has now dulled the murmur of the 
Poet's lip as perfectly as that of the Historian's. 

Sleep, Motley, with the great of ancient days, 

Who wrote for all the years that yet shall be. 
Sleep with Herodotus, whose name and praise 

Have reached the isles of earth's remotest sea. 
Sleep, while, defiant of the slow delays 

Of Time, thy glorious writings speak of thee, 
And in the answering heart of millions raise 

The generous zeal for Right and Liberty. 
And should the days overtake us, when, at last, 

The silence that — ere yet a human pen 
Had traced the slenderest record of tl>e past — 

Hushed the primeval languages/ of men, 
Upon our English tongue its spell shall cast, 

Thy memory shall perish only then. 



THE END. 



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